Five Hemming Morse professionals presented sessions at the California Society of Certified Public Accountants’ (“CalCPA”) Forensic Accounting Forum 2025. The forum, held virtually on March 5th and 6th, addressed evolving forensic accounting and damages topics, techniques, and tools relevant to practitioners.
On Wednesday, March 5, 2025, Jeffrey Klein and Sacha Zadmehran presented the session “Case Law Update,” in which they discussed recent rulings and legal trends likely to impact the forensic and damages consulting landscape. Cases covered highlighted recent decisions touching on damages issues, such as the allowed period of recovery under copyright law, the inclusion of foreign sales in a trademark infringement action, and burden-shifting under a theory of unjust enrichment applied under a state’s trade secret act.
On March 6, 2025, Rachel Hennessy participated in the session titled “Fireside Chat: ‘How I Got Caught’” that kicked off the second day of the forum. This session focused on a discussion with panelist Craig Stanland, who was convicted of fraud in 2012. The topics addressed by the panel included the mentality behind individuals committing fraud and examination of internal failures that result in a failure to detect fraud.
Also March 6, 2025, Jeffrey Klein teamed up with Christian Tregillis to present “Damages for a New Business” alongside attorney Roger Scott, from Buchalter, Nemer, Fields & Young, addressing challenges in the estimation of damages for new businesses. This session covered the evolution of courts’ approach to these damages, including a discussion of recent trends and differences between states, sources of information when lacking a business history, and the role of forecasts.
In addition, Greg Regan co-presented the session “AI – Useful Practice Tool or Scam” to close out the second day of the forum, which looked at emerging AI tools for CPAs and ways to use such tools to enhance analysis in an engagement. The session also looked at recent court cases addressing the appropriateness of the use of AI tools and output by experts, since how not to use AI can be as important, if not more important, than how to use AI.
Rachel, Christian, and Sacha were also members of the planning committee for the forum, demonstrating Hemming Morse professionals’ continued commitment to active leadership in the broader forensic accounting community.
