Art. 192.Appointment of Expert Witnesses; Expenses

Article 192 works alongside, rather than instead of, the Louisiana Code of Evidence. Paragraph A hands off the question of how and when a court may appoint its own expert witness to Code of Evidence Article 706, which sets the standards for court-appointed experts as distinct from the experts each side retains on its own. Article 192 does not restate that process; it points to where it lives.

What Article 192 adds is a cost rule. Paragraph B directs that the reasonable fees and expenses of a court-appointed expert be taxed as costs of court. That matters because costs of court are typically assessed against the losing party, or allocated as the court sees fit, at the end of the case, rather than paid up front by whichever party requested the appointment. A court-appointed expert serves the court itself, not one side, and the costs provision reflects that neutral role.

This is a narrow but useful article to know when a judge, rather than a party, brings in an expert — for example, to help evaluate competing technical testimony. The appointment procedure comes from the Code of Evidence; the question of who ultimately pays comes from Article 192.