Rhode Island Forensic Economics Expert Services

In the Rhode Island Superior Court, the trial court of general jurisdiction by its booklet, in the personal injury, wrongful death and employment actions where KWVRS's economic evidence is offered, a case certified to the court's Court-Annexed Arbitration Program included; in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, in Providence, for federal damages actions; and in the Rhode Island Workers' Compensation Court on a disputed claim. In the Family Court, an economist can price an alimony or support stream or a disabled child's future care. An appeal from the Superior Court goes directly to the Rhode Island Supreme Court. Attorneys confirm the governing rule for their case.

For an injured claimant, the lost earnings to the report date, the earning capacity lost from then to the end of worklife as published tables measure it, the fringe benefits attached to that pay, the household services the injury took and, where a life care plan is retained, the cost of the care it lists. For a death, the earnings, benefits and household help the decedent would have provided, less personal consumption; for a termination, the pay and benefits lost until comparable work is expected. Each figure is grown, discounted to present value and sourced.

Fringe benefits come from the employer's own records of its contributions where they exist, and otherwise from the Bureau of Labor Statistics program on Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, which measures employer costs per hour worked for wages, salaries and benefits such as paid leave, insurance and retirement. Household services are counted in hours from the family's account, checked against the Bureau's American Time Use Survey, and priced at the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics wages of the occupations that would do the work, which for a household in the Providence-Warwick, RI-MA area are that area's.

The worker's documented earnings before the injury and the earnings the vocational evidence supports after it, each figure traced to payroll records or a published series. The court's overview page says the initial hearing can settle uncontested matters such as the injured employee's average weekly wage and number of dependents by stipulation; where the wage is contested instead, the economic calculation documents it for the trial. Whether benefits are owed is the court's decision, and the economist offers no view on it.

The Family Court's Rules of Domestic Relations Procedure call for an affidavit of current assets, liabilities, income and expenses from a party moving for temporary support and from the party opposing it. An economist adds a present value: of an alimony or support stream, or of the future care a disabled child needs, computed from documented records and prepared with the vocational assessment where one is retained. The Family Court decides the order, and the analysis takes no side on it.

Through the expert interrogatories the Superior Court's rules of civil procedure allow: each expert a party expects to call at trial, the subject matter, the substance of the facts and opinions and a summary of the grounds for each opinion. The same rules let a party obtain the documents and materials the expert relied on, and they protect communications between counsel and the expert except those about compensation or identifying facts, data or assumptions counsel provided and the expert relied on. Rhode Island expert disclosure summarizes the state's practice; attorneys confirm the governing rule and its timing for their case.

A complete report is typically 30 to 60 days from receipt of complete records. Inside that range the timing turns on the tax returns, payroll records and benefit statements still to be collected and on whether the analysis waits for a vocational opinion or a life care plan; a trial date in the Rhode Island Workers' Compensation Court or a schedule set in the Superior Court is met by fixing the timetable at engagement, and a rush timeline is arranged case by case when counsel asks for it.

The economists on the KWVRS roster, set out with their credentials on the forensic economics practice page, prepare it, and each report names its author. It does not change with the side: plaintiff and defense counsel receive the same analysis from the same records, worklife tables and government series, and the opposing economist can reproduce every figure. The retaining attorney frames the question, and the records and the published data decide the answer, which may be a smaller loss than the claim asserts.