All-Inclusive Breakout Calculator

One of the most challenging aspects of a personal injury mediation is the calculation of the claimant’s effective “take home” recovery, especially when the offers are being tendered in “all-inclusive sums,” and the lawyer's retainer is contingency fee based.  The math can be time consuming, because first the claimant must reverse engineer the offer to determine the constituent elements of the all-inclusive offer (ie: how much is being paid towards costs, H.S.T., disbursements, damages, etc), and after that, the math continues with a calculation of the lawyer’s fee, and finally making all the necessary deductions (ie: for things such as H.S.T., any shortages between actual disbursements and what the defence was willing to pay towards disbursements, pay-down of litigation loans, etc).  For a more detailed understanding, reference can be made to the article entitled "The All-Inclusive Conundrum."

Fortunately for you, 360Mediations has a useful calculator that quickly breaks down the all-inclusive offer into its constituent elements so that claimants and their lawyers can effortlessly determine the quantum of the claimant’s take home recovery and the legal fees that the claimant will pay their lawyer under the contingency fee retainer.  With the use of a slider, the lawyer can quickly tinker with the retainer rate to see the impact on the legal fees to be paid and the client's take home recovery.  The days of laborious and time-consuming hand calculations are over.  Free to use.

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Judgment Updater Calculator

Parties to a lawsuit often rely on the damage awards made in prior decisions to help assess what the damages "ought to be"  in their case, if the losses and circumstances are similar.  Courts are generally mindful of prior decisions, and will often take them into consideration.  This concept was explained rather well by the Alberta Court of Appeal in the decision of Elliott v. Edmonton (City), 1993 ABCA 45 , as follows:

[15]                       We turn now to the question of the amount of damages. In argument before us no one made any criticisms of the special damages. However, the appellant argues that the award of $40,000. general damages was inordinately low. During fairly brief argument on this point, both sides put before the court more or less comparable cases in which there had been (it was said) awards which could serve as a guide in the present case. The appellant also pointed out that some of the decisions were quite old, and that if one were to increase their awards by the same amount as the consumer price index has increased in Canada in the meantime, that would yield much higher numbers.

[16]                       We are reluctant to mandate a purely numerical formula, and still more reluctant to look as carefully at the amounts in other cases said to be comparable as a land appraiser looks at comparable sales. However, other decisions can give some indication of a general sort of range of damages. Obviously some sort of adjustment must be made to older decisions if one is to pay any attention at all to the numbers in them. A 1970's dollar would buy much more than will one of today's dollars. [Emphasis added]

Fortunately for you, 360Mediations has a useful calculator that can update the values from 1914 to present: very useful to update historical values based on the consumer price index, and to ensure that you are comparing apples with apples when using historical awards to define the value of the case today. Free to use.

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Prejudgment Interest Calculator

Rather remarkably, the legislation regarding the calculation of pre-judgment interest is rather cumbersome: something that would not be expected given that lawyers and judges typically don't have doctorates in math.  For a detailed dissertation on all of the complexities, please read David's blog entitled "Calculating Prejudgment Interest - Not as easy as it appears."   Fortunately for you, 360Mediations has whittled all of the cumbersome math into a simple Prejudgment Interest Calculator.  Free to use.

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Pierringer Payout Calculator

When a plaintiff settles with some, but not all, the defendants in their case, the law is rather unusual in the manner in which it treats those settlements, especially when the settlement results in an amount that varies from how the judge or jury assesses damages and liability.  For a more detailed look into the law surrounding partial settlements, please read David's blog entitled "Partial Settlement Structures - An imperfect solution to a complex resolution."   360Mediations makes things much less cumbersome by providing a Pierringer Payout Calculator to help litigants understand the outcomes using various different scenarios.  Free to use.

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Days Between Calculator

As the name suggests, this calculator will determine the number of days between two dates supplied by the user.  But it goes further by providing the number of weeks, bi-weeks, months, and years, as well.  For a variety of different reasons, all of these time frames can be important.  A person's age at the time of the accident may be important - expressed in years, months and days.  The number of months between the date of rent default and the end of the lease term may be important to express in months in order to calculate the number of months of rent owed.  The number of weeks or bi-weeks may be important when calculating entitlement to a weekly or bi-weekly benefit, such as income replacement benefits.  The number of days may be important when calculating per diem  interest owed.  360Mediations makes things easy with this Days-Between Calculator.  Free to use.

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