Quelle responsabilité pour l’expert ?

Abstract

The question of the responsibility of the judicial expert relates to the articulation of the place of the judge and that of the expert in judicial decision-making. In the 19th century, it was recognized that the expert could not be responsible for his errors of assessment if his conclusions were adopted by the judgment: it would have been to attack the authority of the res judicata. Jurisprudence now recognizes the predominant place of expertise in the judgment of technical questions which escape the knowledge of the judge. The expert must respect the guiding principles of the trial. Its responsibility is engaged on many grounds: discipline specific to judicial expertise and ordinal discipline sometimes overlap, common law criminal liability for breach of professional secrecy and, finally, common law civil liability which obliges him to answer financially for his harmful acts.