Massachusetts Expert Witness Testimony Services

A Massachusetts testimony engagement has two parts: a written report, and the expert's sworn account of it. The report, vocational, life care or forensic economic, sets out the method followed, the records and data drawn on and each opinion reached, and is written so that it can be served as the expert disclosure the forum requires. At deposition the expert answers for that report question by question, on the method, the sources and the opinions; at trial the same opinions are presented on direct examination and their bases defended on cross-examination. A rebuttal assignment reads an opposing expert's report against the same records and states where its data, assumptions or method depart from the file, in a written rebuttal or from the witness stand. New records or a late opposing report are met with a supplemental opinion.

Where the testimony is given depends on the forum, and each forum sets the format. Vocational, life care and economic opinions are given in the Superior Court in the personal injury, employment, wrongful death and medical malpractice matters in which they are retained; the court's page calls it a trial court of general jurisdiction, with justices in every county, in Boston the Suffolk County Superior Court, and adds that it alone convenes medical malpractice tribunals. Federal matters go to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts; its divisional offices page lists Boston, Worcester and Springfield. The Probate and Family Court's page lists child support, custody, divorce and parenting time in its jurisdiction, and there the testimony addresses a spouse's or parent's earning capacity.

Workers' compensation disputes go to the Department of Industrial Accidents, whose page says it oversees the Commonwealth's system, and the vocational opinion is given at the stage the dispute has reached. Its dispute steps page describes the conciliation and the conference as informal, with the administrative judge able to issue a temporary order at the conference; describes the hearing as the trial phase, at which witnesses are called, Massachusetts evidence rules apply and a stenographer takes down the testimony, and at which the administrative judge may require both sides to submit new evidence and oral testimony before a hearing decision; and describes the Reviewing Board as examining the hearing transcripts, requiring legal briefs and able to ask for oral arguments. Of those steps the hearing is the one described with witnesses called, and a vocational report prepared for it is written to be read beside the transcript. The Appeals Court's page lists the Industrial Accident Board among the agencies whose final decisions it hears appeals from, while the Supreme Judicial Court, by its page the Commonwealth's highest appellate court, hears appeals and issues written opinions.

The testifying expert is named on the practice page, and each expert testifies to the report that expert wrote: the vocational expert to employability and earning capacity, the life care planner to the plan, the economist to present value, so that no one is asked to speak to another's discipline. Plaintiff and defense retain KWVRS for testimony on the same terms: the report and the preparation are the same whichever side notices the deposition or calls the witness, every figure traces to a source the report names, and the opinion can be reproduced by the opposing expert. If the forum allows remote testimony and counsel set it up, the expert testifies by video on the same record and with the same exhibits; the Suffolk Probate and Family Court's page, for its part, links a guide to remote hearings. The dates of deposition and trial are set by the parties and the court, not by the expert, so the report is retained first and the testimony scheduled around the case calendar, with preparation sessions with retaining counsel once a deposition is noticed or a trial date set. Attorneys confirm the governing rule for their case. KWVRS works with attorneys nationwide from its New Jersey, Virginia and Rhode Island offices.