New Jersey Forensic Economics Expert Services

The Law Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey, in personal injury, medical malpractice, wrongful death and employment actions where economic damages are claimed, and the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, which sits in Camden, Newark and Trenton, in federal employment and other damages matters. The Superior Court sits by county vicinage, and the New Jersey state page lists the vicinages and their courthouses.

Earnings lost to date and earning capacity lost going forward, the fringe benefits attached to those earnings, the household services the person can no longer perform, and the cost of the life care plan, each reduced to present value; in a wrongful death action, the earnings, benefits and household services the decedent would have provided, net of the decedent's own consumption; in a wrongful termination matter, the earnings and benefits lost until comparable work is expected to be found.

Each year's loss is projected from the person's documented earnings and benefits with an earnings growth assumption, carried through the worklife expectancy the published tables support, and discounted to the valuation date with a discount rate drawn from government data. The report states each assumption and its source, and a sensitivity analysis shows how the total moves as each assumption is varied across its reasonable range.

At the replacement cost of the hours the person can no longer perform. The hours come from the person's own account of the household's division of work, checked against published time-use data, and the cost comes from published wage data for the occupations that would replace that work in the person's region. The loss of household services practice page describes the method, and this site's household services valuator applies it.

The roster's credentialed economists, who are set out with their credentials on the forensic economics practice page. Every report names its author and documents the method, the data sources and every calculation, so that an opposing economist can reproduce the figures and the cross-examination can test the assumptions rather than the arithmetic.

The vocational evaluation supplies the post-injury earning capacity against which the loss of earnings and earning capacity is measured, and the life care plan supplies the items, frequencies, durations and prices the economist reduces to present value. The three reports rest on the same records, so the economic report cites the other two rather than restating them, and a revised plan or a supplemental vocational opinion is followed by a supplemental economic analysis.

A complete report is typically 30 to 60 days from receipt of complete records. Within that range the timing depends on the earnings records, tax returns and benefit statements to be collected and on whether the analysis waits for a vocational opinion or a life care plan, and a rush timeline is arranged case by case when counsel requests it at engagement.

At its headquarters in Hackensack, New Jersey, in Bergen County, for plaintiff and defense counsel alike, with the same method and the same published data whichever side retains the analysis. KWVRS also maintains a Richmond, Virginia office. The report is organized to the disclosure requirements of the forum in which the matter is pending.