When is a shortcut really a drag, or not?

A plaintiff’s economic expert was claiming that damages were to accrue over an extended period of time due to a permanently damaged reputation. A spreadsheet was used to list sales, costs, and resulting profits by month for over twenty years. The expert had altered and refined the spreadsheet several times.

The final version of the spreadsheet was turned over as part of the expert’s report. A growth rate was inserted that was picked up by the formula contained in the monthly sales figures.

Due to an incorrect use of a shortcut copy command in the spreadsheet, the lost profits after the tenth year of the projection became discontinuous, abruptly decreasing in one month, then following a smooth trend upward though the remainder of the time horizon. Although totals did not show it, the path of profits actually became negative for several years after the tenth year. The economist had revised the spreadsheet, but failed to drag the revision down all cells, stopping after ten years. The remainder of the projection used the unrevised formula which abruptly took the profits into the negative regions. Since the profits were projected for a surgeon, it made little economic sense that a surgeon would continue practicing for several years with a negative income.

Upon questioning in the deposition, the expert could not quickly figure out the reason for the questions and admitted that, if the projection showed it, it was quite possible for profits to be negative for short periods of time.

Problems and inconsistencies could have been detected by the expert by simply graphing the result. However, the expert chose not to admit the possibility of a mistake in a deposition and provided damaging testimony instead.