BROWN ECONOMIC CONSULTING - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- President
- Member of the American Academy of Economic and Financial Experts
- Plaintiff 's Expert
Education
Master of Economics degree
University of Calgary, 1998
Bachelor of Arts (Economics)
University of Calgary, 1991
Dr. Frank Strain's specialties are the economic growth and development of Atlantic Canada and labour market economics. Dr. Strain is currently Professor and Head of the Department of Economics at Mount Allison University where he teaches courses on labour economics and economic growth and development. He is the co-author of a widely used economics textbook and the author or editor of two other monographs. He has also published more than 20 academic papers and has presented research findings at numerous academic conferences. Dr. Strain has served as President of the Atlantic Canada Economics Association and on the Executive of the Canadian Economics Association.
Gordon Semenoff married Valerie Semenoff about two months before the tragedy. There are no children of the marriage, but we are asked to assume that there would have been at least two children. It would not be right to assume the childless state would have continued and the assumption we are asked to make appears reasonable.
[15] Further, in Semenoff, after setting out the analysis in Kemp and Kemp regarding a married man with two children, Hutcheon J.A. for a unanimous Court of Appeal, held at pp. 80-81:
[Plaintiff s counsel] has submitted that the defendant, with the burden of proof on him, has produced no evidence to support a deduction. We know, however, that in this hypothetical calculation living expenses must be present. In the absence of precise figures, I think that we are justified in accepting the conventional deduction of 33% discussed in Harris.
[16] The Defendant argues that this approach is "heir-centered", in contrast to "victim-centered". It fails to distinguish between personal injury claims, which this is, and dependency claims, which this is not. He states that if one employs the Harris methodology of simply calculating assumed income less a proportionate share of family expenses, what remains is not the deceased's available surplus; rather what remains is the deceased's available surplus plus the amount that we can assume that the deceased would have spent on even basic necessities for his family. This method of calculation of damages not only over-compensates the loss but it does so by focussing on the expenses required by hypothetical dependents who can never, and will never, bring a dependency claim. In short, by following this methodology, the Court would be compensating not only the deceased's claim but also a dependency claim, which was never claimed and which will never arise.
[17] The Defendant submits that the Court of Appeal in referring to the decisions of Harris and Semenoff only accepted the approach defined as "available surplus" in large. He states that it is clear from a review of those decisions that there were no statistics or data for those Courts to rely upon, apart from the "conventional deduction" in each case. If our Court of Appeal was endorsing the percentage deductions applied in Harris and Semenoff, it would have been very simple for the Court to say so. It did not. The Court in Harris simply made a deduction predicated on the inverse of the dependency deduction and the court in Semenoff simply followed the Harris rationale. It did so in the absence of reliable evidence. If our Court of Appeal was endorsing such an arbitrary approach, there would have been no need for expert evidence on such points, something the Court clearly called for by directing a new trial of this action.
Job Titles:
- Economic Consultant & Legal Researcher
Dr. Clark is a well-recognized agricultural economist at the Dalhousie University; his research in agricultural economics has resulted in numerous published articles. Dr. Clark works with Brown Economic Consulting on various research projects and ensures that Brown Economic is kept abreast of current developments in agricultural economics.