Our Approach

Major disputes rarely stem from a single misstep. They arise from a chain of business judgments made under pressure—whether to credit a complaint, escalate concerns, investigate fully, preserve discretion, reclassify employees, tolerate risk, or document what occurred. These decisions reflect incentives, cost calculations, regulatory exposure, reputational pressures, and internal power dynamics far more than the language of an employee handbook. When harm occurs, institutions do not deny these choices. They reframe them. The Garfinkel Group examines each decision point: what leaders knew, what options they considered, and why they selected one course over another. By mapping the logic behind those judgments, we establish liability where it originates—in the business decisions that caused the outcome.

Organizations do not experience litigation as a legal abstraction. They experience it as a business event with consequences for capital markets, regulators, customers, governance, and reputation. Evaluating a dispute therefore requires understanding not only the legal merits, but also how leadership weighed cost, precedent, exposure, and stakeholder impact. Our work speaks directly to that calculus. By showing that harm resulted from deliberate judgment calls—not accident or inevitability—we shift cases from isolated incidents to enterprise-level exposure. That shift changes outcomes.

Organizational misconduct is seldom impulsive. Prior to decision-making, entities systematically assess risk, evaluate exposure, and compare the costs of action versus inaction. Decisions are informed by actuarial models, technological systems, and established financial reporting standards to determine whether to intervene or accept certain risks. Institutions base their decisions on quantifiable measures—assessing probability, cost, impact, and strategic tolerance. Key determinations regarding workforce structure, compensation, compliance investment, escalation criteria, and settlement strategies are all anchored in these data-driven evaluations. By critically examining the premises underlying these calculations, it becomes possible to discern instances where organizations consciously accepted exposures, as well as to evaluate the rationale behind such choices—whether it was robust, selective, or self-serving.

Business decisions are executed not only during meetings but also through robust systems. Payroll platforms, HRIS setups, monitoring solutions, compliance applications, and data retention frameworks serve to translate leadership's directives into scalable operations. Our approach involves evaluating how strategic choices transition from leadership to operational workflows and code, as well as assessing whether these systems impact risk exposure, transparency, or accountability.

Financial reporting renders internal judgment externally visible. Classification decisions, reserves, accruals, disclosures, and internal controls reveal how leadership assessed probability, materiality, and consequence—often contradicting later narratives of surprise or inevitability. By aligning internal decision-making with financial representation, we expose inconsistencies between how risk was managed in practice and how institutions attempt to explain it after harm occurs.

Most litigation isolates conduct. The Garfinkel Group reconstructs the economics of decision-making. By integrating actuarial reasoning, system implementation, and financial reporting, we show that harm was the foreseeable result of deliberate, quantified, operationalized choices—not isolated behavior or discretionary judgment. This converts cases from credibility disputes into accountability exercises and forces institutions to confront their own internal logic.