Disclosure Duty
Definition
The obligation to report all material findings, including those that undermine the instructing party's position. Negative results, method limitations, known error rates, and contrary peer opinion must all be disclosed. Selective reporting is treated as a serious breach.
- Covers
- All material findings, favourable or not
- Includes
- Negative results, limitations, error rates, contrary opinion
- Breach treated as
- Serious professional misconduct
- Field
- Codes of conduct for forensic experts
Common questions
Why does disclosure duty extend to findings that hurt the instructing party's case?+
The expert's obligation runs to the court, not to whichever side retained them, so selectively presenting only favourable findings misleads the fact-finder and undermines the independence that gives expert testimony its evidentiary weight.
What counts as a known limitation that must be disclosed?+
Anything that could change how much weight a court should give the opinion: the method's published error rate, sample degradation, equipment limitations, or a recognised alternative interpretation supported by other experts in the field.
Related terms
- Accreditation
- Formal recognition by a standards body (such as UKAS in the UK, A2LA in the US, or NABL in India) that a...
- Competence
- The duty to opine only within the expert's validated area of expertise, using methods that are scientifically sound and, in most jurisdictions,...
- Duty to the Court
- The obligation of expert witnesses in UK proceedings (and, to varying degrees, in other jurisdictions) to assist the court with objective, unbiased...
- Gatekeeping
- The judicial function, codified in the United States by Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals (1993) and Federal Rule of Evidence 702, of...
- Independence
- The requirement that an expert's opinion is formed solely on the evidence and the expert's own professional judgment, free from pressure from...