Opinion ID: 1828702
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: admission of rebuttal report

Text: On appeal, Dowding and United also claim that the single judge erred as a matter of law with the admission into evidence of Freeman's rebuttal vocational rehabilitation loss of earning capacity report essentially based on a criticism of its content and methodology. Admission of evidence is within the discretion of the Workers' Compensation Court, whose determination in this regard will not be reversed upon appeal absent an abuse of discretion. Miller v. E.M.C. Ins. Cos., 259 Neb. 433, 610 N.W.2d 398 (2000); Sheridan v. Catering Mgmt., Inc., 252 Neb. 825, 566 N.W.2d 110 (1997). Neb.Rev.Stat. § 48-162.01(3) (Reissue 1998) sets forth that [i]t shall be a rebuttable presumption that any opinion expressed [by a court-appointed vocational rehabilitation counselor] as the result of such a loss-of-earning-power evaluation is correct. The statute, therefore, anticipates the admission of evidence to rebut the presumption of correctness statutorily assigned to any loss of earning capacity report prepared by the court-appointed vocational rehabilitation counselor. In the instant case, the single judge admitted into evidence Freeman's report as a rebuttal to the report of Fay's loss of earning capacity prepared by Anderson, the court-appointed vocational rehabilitation counselor. We determine there was no abuse of discretion in the single judge's ruling admitting the rebuttal vocational rehabilitation report, and accordingly, there is no merit to this assignment of error.