§ 172.116.Appointed Expert

The tribunal-appointed expert, a feature of international practice with no counterpart in Chapter 171.

The tribunal may appoint its own expert to report on a specific issue it determines.

The issue is defined by the tribunal, which keeps the expert’s work inside the questions that matter.

Parties can be required to cooperate. The tribunal may require a party to give the expert relevant information, or to produce or provide access to relevant documents, goods or other property.

Access to property is the practically important part in construction, shipping and manufacturing disputes, where the expert has to inspect the thing itself.

The expert is not beyond challenge. After delivering a written or oral report, the expert shall participate in an oral hearing if a party requests it or the tribunal considers it necessary.

At that hearing each party may question the expert and present an expert witness on the issue.

That right is what makes the practice acceptable to parties from adversarial systems, who otherwise face an opinion they had no chance to test.

The report must be shared. Section 172.113(b) requires an expert report the tribunal may rely on to be communicated to each party.

Everything here yields to agreement, and expert costs are among the costs the tribunal may allocate under Section 172.145.