Overriding duty
Definition
The expert's primary obligation to give the court an honest, objective, and complete account of the evidence, regardless of the interests of the instructing party. Codified in procedural rules in many jurisdictions and recognised in case law in others.
Related terms
- Concurrent evidence
- Also called 'hot-tubbing': a procedure, common in Australian courts and used experimentally in England, where opposing experts give evidence simultaneously, respond to...
- Instructions
- The written brief given to the expert that defines the questions they are asked to address, the materials they are given, and...
- Likelihood ratio (LR)
- The ratio of two conditional probabilities: the probability of the observed evidence given the prosecution's hypothesis (same source), divided by the probability...
- Single joint expert (SJE)
- An expert appointed by a court or agreed by both parties to provide a single neutral opinion rather than one expert per...
- Statement of limitations
- A section of the report that identifies factors constraining the reliability or completeness of the opinion, including sample quality, missing data, unvalidated...
Explained in
- The Expert Report: Structure and DutiesThe expert's primary obligation to give the court an honest, objective, and complete account of the evidence, regardless of the interests of the instructing pa...