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Quantum reports for plaintiffs and defendants with claims in the District Court at Southport, the Supreme Court of Queensland or the Federal Court: lost profit, lost opportunity and loss of value, measured against a but-for case that holds up when the other side's expert tests it.
Indicative valuations from A$799. Certified Summary and Detailed reports from seven business days.
For a Gold Coast business in a commercial dispute, economic loss is the profit it would have made without the wrongful conduct, less the profit it actually made and anything it saved or recovered. The lawyers frame causation and the measure of loss; the valuer builds the counterfactual, deducts avoided costs and tests the result across scenarios.
Most commercial disputes that reach a Gold Coast solicitor turn on two questions: did the other party do something wrong, and what did it cost? The second question is usually the one that settles the matter. It comes up when a builder is pushed off a residential project at Coomera halfway through, when a management rights operator in a Surfers Paradise tower sees its letting business undermined, when a Burleigh Heads cafe loses its lease early, or when a boat builder in the Coomera marine precinct is left holding a cancelled supply order. A claim that is plainly overstated hands the defendant its best argument, while a claim built from the business's own records is difficult to discount.
The counterfactual carries the claim. The accounts show what happened; no document shows what would have happened if the contract had been honoured or the departing manager had left the customer list behind. That picture has to be built from evidence that predates the dispute, has to track the case as pleaded, and has to respect what the business could actually have staffed, funded and delivered. It is also the first thing the opposing expert will try to take apart.
Gold Coast trade adds its own complication. Revenue in tourism, hospitality and short-stay accommodation rises and falls with school holidays, major events and interstate visitors, and a construction business earns as project stages are completed, not evenly through the year. A model that averages across those swings, or sets a peak month against a quiet one, gets the loss wrong in one direction or the other. The understanding of earnings that lets us value a Broadbeach restaurant group or a Molendinar fabricator is the same understanding needed to measure the damage done to one.
We prepare reports for matters in the Magistrates Court and the District Court of Queensland at Southport, in the Supreme Court of Queensland, and in the Federal Court of Australia, which sits in Brisbane. We also act as consulting experts reviewing another party's quantum report, and we take part in experts' conferences, joint reports and concurrent evidence.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
Whether the conduct caused the loss is a question for the Court, and the measure of damages the cause of action supports is a question for counsel. The valuer takes both as instructed, prices the loss on the stated causal assumptions and, where the parties disagree about those assumptions, runs the numbers on each version so a figure remains whichever way the Court decides.
The most persuasive forecasts are the ones a business wrote for itself when nothing turned on them: budgets, bank submissions, board papers and business plans. Historical accounts, revenue by customer and industry material fill in the rest. A projection prepared after the event by one side's expert is given the least weight.
A model that relies on a breach, a start date or a causal link nobody has pleaded collapses before its arithmetic is even examined. We work from the pleadings and the letter of instruction, and every assumption in the report is traced back to where it came from.
Extra sales in the counterfactual usually need more people, premises, vehicles, stock or working capital, and competitors would have kept competing. On the Gold Coast that includes casual and seasonal staff, who are hardest to find exactly when trade peaks. Ignore those limits and the loss is overstated, which gives the opposing expert an easy target.
Where the lost future is uncertain, the report sets out alternative scenarios and names the inputs that move the result most. Each assumption can then be tested on its own, and the conclusion survives if the Court rejects one of them.
Expert reports in the Queensland courts, including the District Court and the Magistrates Court at Southport, are governed by Chapter 11 Part 5 of the Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999 (Qld). Those rules put the expert's duty to the Court ahead of any obligation to the client and prefer a single expert on an issue where that is workable. Federal Court reports follow that Court's expert evidence practice note. In both settings the report has to disclose its instructions and assumptions, set out reasoning a reader can retrace and be candid about its limits. Every quantum report we write meets that standard from the first draft, whether or not it is ever served.
Counsel chooses the measure of loss the cause of action supports. Our job is to apply the measure we are instructed on and to lay out every step, so the arithmetic can be checked by the other side and the Court.
Diminution in value is the difference between what an asset is worth and what it would have been worth but for the wrong. It is the standard claim when a business bought on the Gold Coast does not live up to the warranties in its sale contract: we value it at completion on two footings, as represented and as it actually was, with the same method and market evidence for both. Expectation loss, the usual contractual measure, is the profit the plaintiff would have earned had the contract been performed. Reliance loss covers money spent on the strength of the conduct and now wasted; it is easier to prove and can be the better choice where lost profit is too speculative to carry the claim.
Restraint of trade claims must separate the clients who left because of the breach from those who would have gone anyway, and must stop at the end of the period the restraint protected, a recurring issue in allied health, real estate and professional practices where clients follow a practitioner from Robina to Southport. Loss of a commercial opportunity needs both the value of the opportunity and the probability it would have been won, each supported by tender records and past win rates; it arises for contractors bidding into the building pipeline around the 2032 Games, where a tender lost through another party's conduct can found a claim. Business interruption asks whether revenue was lost outright or only pushed into a later period, and whether customer relationships suffered harm that needs to be measured on its own, a common question for venues whose peak season was disrupted.
These are the first things an opposing expert looks for. Each one is cheap to fix before the report is served and expensive to defend once it has been.
Because a quantum report is normally served, picked apart by the opposing expert and, at trial, defended under cross-examination, most loss matters need the Detailed report. Before proceedings are issued in the District Court at Southport or the Supreme Court of Queensland, a party may need nothing more than a private view of the likely range to decide whether to sue, defend or make an offer.
The report records the instructions, the causal assumptions adopted, the measure of loss applied and every document relied on. The counterfactual is built in steps from named sources, with each assumption isolated so it can be challenged by itself. Cost deductions, capacity, mitigation and the double counting test all sit in the body of the report, and the conclusion is given as a range with its main drivers named. Limitations are stated where they bite, not left in an appendix at the back.
The certified valuer who signs it meets the opposing expert, helps settle the joint report on what is agreed and what is not, and gives evidence at trial, concurrently if the District Court or the Supreme Court of Queensland so directs. If the parties end up with a single expert under the Queensland rules, we can take that role and report to the Court rather than to either side. We also raise the likely tax treatment of any award with counsel early, before the model is final. For defendants the same discipline runs in reverse: a critique of the plaintiff's report that isolates its weakest assumptions and gives counsel the questions to ask is often the best value engagement, because an overstated claim usually fails on its own numbers.
Take away the single assumption that carries the most weight in this counterfactual: how much of the claim is left? If the expert has not isolated the assumptions, there is no answer, and it is the first thing the opposing expert and the judge will want to know.
Talk your situation through with a certified valuer before you commit to anything, at no cost.