I had always thought that, to determine how much one gets from the estate, one would engage in a simple calculation exemplified as followed. If your November 30th statement showed, say, 65 million dollars, this is one-tenth of one percent of the total amount of 65 billion dollars shown on all the November 30th statements collectively, and therefore you would get one-tenth of one percent of whatever Picard collects and distributes. Or if one uses Picard's cash in/cash out, the simple calculation would be as follows. If your net equity is twenty million dollars on the cash-in minus cash-out basis, and the total amount of cash-in was $20 billion, then your personal cash in was one-tenth of one percent of the total cash-in and you would get one-tenth of one percent of whatever Picard collects and distributes.
I am no mathematician, believe me, but to me these kinds of calculations seemed simple, easy and right. If they are wrong, I hope someone will correct me. But I note that in his brief, in calculating why Chaitman and her clients would do better under his method of calculation than under their own, Picard uses fancy algebra-type calculations, or equations. I think they come out the same as mine do, but am not positive (and one knowledgeable person has said to me that Picard's calculations contain mistakes). If my simple calculations are right, I have no idea why it's necessary to use the method Picard uses, which, it seems to me, is far harder to understand.
Of course, Picard uses his (in my estimation) more difficult calculations to make the point -- as if the point is a huge deal that only the cognoscenti could understand -- that Chaitman and her clients are economically better off his way than theirs. My question, however, would be: what's the big deal to understand? If the November 30th statements are used to calculate net equity, then everyone has a positive net equity, so everyone shares in the amount Picard collects and distributes. If Picard's method is used, lots of people get knocked out because they took out more than they put in, they therefore have a negative net equity, and they therefore do not share in whatever Picard collects, so that the remaining people who do share in it each get more than otherwise. As said, what is the big deal in understanding this? It's as simple as understanding that if 50 people share equally in one million dollars, each will get more than if 100 people share in it. Yet Picard did make it all a big deal in his brief. One wonders why. Could it conceivably have been to snow the judge, the victims, and the press with the supposed complexity of what he is doing, and thereby obtain their sympathy and agreement?
Of course, maybe I'm missing something here. Or maybe I'm missing a lot. If so, I would greatly appreciate being set right.*
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