Pennsylvania Vocational Expert Witness Services

In a Pennsylvania personal injury, employment or disability matter the vocational expert answers three questions: can the person work, at what, and for how much. The answer comes from the file and from testing. School, training, medical and employment records establish what the person did before the injury and what the medical restrictions now allow; a vocational interview and standardized testing document the skills the person carries; a transferable skills analysis maps those skills onto the occupations that stay within the restrictions; and a labor market survey reports whether those occupations exist in the area where the person lives and works and what they pay. The report compares earning capacity before and after the injury and states the difference, with every occupation, wage and source named, so that the opinion can be reproduced by the opposing expert and examined at deposition.

Vocational opinions in Pennsylvania are offered in three kinds of forum: the Court of Common Pleas, the trial court of the county in which the action is venued; the three federal districts; and the Office of Adjudication, whose workers' compensation judges decide disputed claims. This site carries Pennsylvania pages for Philadelphia, Allegheny, Lehigh, Erie, Berks, Lackawanna, Dauphin, Northampton, Lancaster and Bucks Counties, and the Pennsylvania state page sets out the court structure by judicial district and names each county's court as the Unified Judicial System names it. A civil decision may be appealed by either party, and the Superior Court of Pennsylvania is one of two statewide intermediate appellate courts. Federal employment and disability matters proceed in the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern, Middle and Western Districts of Pennsylvania on the schedule each court's order sets.

For a matter venued in Philadelphia the forums are these. The First Judicial District's trial court is the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, and civil actions with a vocational claim are heard in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County, Trial Division, Civil. Federal actions arising in Philadelphia are heard by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania at the James A. Byrne U.S. Courthouse, Philadelphia, as the court's site names it. A disputed workers' compensation claim is assigned to a workers' compensation judge who hears cases in the county where the employee resides or in a neighboring county, and the Office of Adjudication's directory lists a Philadelphia office in its Southeastern District. The Philadelphia venue page on this site carries the county's courts, its appellate route, its district office and its labor market.

In a Pennsylvania workers' compensation claim the vocational expert's work is the earning power assessment. The expert interviews the injured worker, reviews the physical restrictions the medical evidence supports, completes a transferable skills analysis and conducts a labor market survey that identifies positions within those restrictions in the worker's labor market, with the employer, the duties and the wage of each position documented so that the worker and the parties can examine them. The report states the earning power the survey supports and is presented before the workers' compensation judge of the Office of Adjudication who decides the claim; what the assessment means for the benefit is a question for the judge and for counsel, not for the expert, and the expert states no rule of entitlement. The same assessment is prepared whether the injured worker or the insurer retains it.

Every Pennsylvania report is written to what its forum requires of an expert disclosure, and deposition and trial testimony follow the case calendar. Attorneys confirm the governing rule for their case. KWVRS is headquartered in Hackensack, New Jersey, and maintains a Richmond, Virginia office. Plaintiff and defense.