Law360, New York ( July 22, 2015, 10:49 AM EDT) -- It has been some 25 years since the publication of Franklin Fisher and Craig Romaine's article, "Janis Joplin's Yearbook and the Theory of Damages," which analyzes the point in time commercial damages should be evaluated.[1] Fisher and Romaine argue that, in cases that involve a lost asset the value of which can change over time, damages should be measured as of the time the wrongful act occurred. Subsequent writers have generally favored or at least deferred to that approach.[2] Here I suggest that the Fisher and Romaine argument is somewhat contrived (in a way that to my knowledge has not been recognized before) and that there is no compelling reason to favor their approach. The alternative, calculating damages as of the trial — an ex post analysis as opposed to Fisher and Romaine's ex ante analysis — is not inferior from an economic perspective. In addition, the two approaches are symmetric with regard to other considerations, such as opportunistic behavior on the part of plaintiffs. I suggest that, absent information on when an asset would have been disposed of in the but-for world, the general presumption should be in favor of calculating damages as of the trial....