Dahlberg/greene/10″/dt1st/mark2nd

Troy Dahlberg

Partner

Ernst & Young LLP

Specialty: Dispute resolution

Conflicts? Troy Dahlberg has heard a million of them. From hamburgers in Hong Kong to subways in Los Angeles, Dahlberg is brought on to determine whose money often running well into the millions belongs to whom.

“You get all sorts of different clients all the time,” says Dahlberg, 38, who is both a CPA and a lawyer. “It’s not like auditing, where you’re with the same client for five years.”

Much of Dalhberg’s work is divided between two areas: forensic accounting and calculating economic damages in business disputes. It was in the latter arena that Dalhberg ended up dealing with those Hong Kong hamburgers, as part of a suit brought by a Thai fast-food franchisee who needed to calculate the potential millions he said he could have made in the Hong Kong market.

In such cases, Dahlberg can bring a regiment of economists and others to research the most complex and arcane of subjects such as the eating habits of Hong Kong residents. “Our firm has invested a phenomenal amount in electronic intellectual capital” in order to support such research, Dahlberg said.

Closer to home, Dahlberg and his department which he took over just a month ago, promoted from the No. 2 spot worked for the last several years on behalf of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. They were part of the team that defended the agency against millions of dollars in claims by business owners and landlords who said subway construction along Wilshire Boulevard cost them a bundle. Dahlberg said the firm was successful in helping to show that in many of those cases, economic damages were caused by other factors, including riots and recession.

“I think they did a wonderful analysis, very sophisticated,” said James Schreier, a partner with one the MTA’s law firm, Christensen, Miller, Fink, Jacobs, Glaser, Weil & Shapiro LLP.

R.W. Greene