Vocational & Rehabilitation Experts in Rhode Island

The Rhode Island Superior Court is the forum for jury and non-jury trials of civil and criminal matters, with original jurisdiction in civil cases above a stated amount, in equity matters and in all felony proceedings, and it sits by county: the Judiciary's Superior Court contacts page lists the Providence County Superior Court at the Licht Judicial Complex in Providence, the Kent County Superior Court at the Noel Judicial Complex in Warwick, the Newport County Superior Court at the Murray Judicial Complex in Newport and the Washington County Superior Court at the McGrath Judicial Complex in Wakefield, and the Judiciary's contact directory lists the Providence court's clerk's office for Providence/Bristol County. For the venues on this site, Providence, Cranston, Pawtucket, East Providence, Woonsocket and North Providence lie in Providence County, Warwick, Coventry and West Warwick in Kent County, and South Kingstown in Washington County. The Rhode Island District Court, whose page gives it original jurisdiction of civil matters up to a stated amount and concurrent jurisdiction with the Superior Court in a band above it, with appeals from its trials heard anew in the Superior Court, sits in numbered divisions, and the Rhode Island Family Court, whose Domestic Relations Clerk's Office processes the complaints for divorce, separate maintenance and child support, the matters in which a spouse's earning capacity is evaluated, sits alongside it: the Judiciary's courthouse locations page houses the Superior, Family and District Courts at the Garrahy Judicial Complex in Providence, the Noel Judicial Complex in Warwick, the Murray Judicial Complex in Newport and the McGrath Judicial Complex in Wakefield. The Rhode Island Supreme Court is the state's court of last resort, with absolute appellate jurisdiction over questions of law and equity, and it sits at the Licht Judicial Complex; the Judiciary's list of courts places no intermediate appellate court between the Superior Court and the Supreme Court. Providence is the state capital.

Federal civil actions are heard by the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, which sits in Providence at the Federal Building and Courthouse. Workers' compensation claims are heard by the Rhode Island Workers' Compensation Court, which the Judiciary places at the Garrahy Judicial Complex in Providence and whose own page charges it with hearing and deciding all disputes between an injured employee and an employer relating to workers' compensation benefits. The court's jurisdiction and overview page describes its stages: a pretrial conference, which the page requires within a stated number of days of the petition and at which the judge first tries to settle the dispute and otherwise enters a pretrial order that binds the parties while any trial is pending; a trial, a full evidentiary hearing on the record before a trial judge, who enters a decree with findings of fact; and review by the court's own Appellate Division, whose panels affirm, reverse or modify the trial judge's decree, with further review by the Rhode Island Supreme Court only on a writ of certiorari. The Rhode Island Office of Rehabilitation Services (ORS) is the state vocational rehabilitation agency.

Ten of this site's Rhode Island city pages carry a wage and employment record for their own metropolitan area, each named as the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics series titles it, and all ten report the same area: Providence, Warwick, Cranston, Pawtucket, East Providence, Woonsocket, Coventry, North Providence, South Kingstown and West Warwick report the Providence-Warwick, RI-MA area, whose title shows that it crosses into Massachusetts, while the pages of the remaining Rhode Island cities report Rhode Island's statewide figures. Wages come from that series and unemployment rates from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics series, both published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the analysis uses the data of the region where the claimant lives and works.

Plaintiff and defense counsel retain KWVRS for Rhode Island matters, and each report is prepared to the disclosure requirements of the forum in which the matter is pending, whether a county's Superior Court, the Family Court, the federal court or the Rhode Island Workers' Compensation Court. KWVRS is headquartered in Hackensack, New Jersey, and maintains a Richmond, Virginia office. Attorneys confirm the governing rule for their case.