Fire the hired gun: Eliminating expert bias in the accusatorial-adversarial civil justice system

Kehrhahn_FHH, Ferdinand Heinrich Hermann

Fire the hired gun: Eliminating expert bias in the accusatorial-adversarial civil justice system

Thesis / Dissertation

2023

Publisher

University of Cape town

Department

Department of Public Law

Faculty

Faculty of Law

Abstract

In 1954, an expert witness, Dr Unsworth, testifying for the defendant, exculpatorily opined that the plaintiff was a malingerer, but had he testified for the plaintiff instead, his opinion would be that the plaintiff's condition was post-traumatic at the hands of the defendant. 1 This statement captures the essence of the adversarial expert bias problem. As early as 1843, selection expert bias (adversarial bias) was observed in AngloAmerican jurisdictions. 2 From a cursory search of South African case law, more fully set out in section 4.8, it is evident that expert bias is a legitimate and significant problem. 3 This work considers the problematic manifestation of expert bias in South Africa and possible responses thereto in the context of a predominantly adversarial procedural system, but the problem is in no way confined to the adversarial legal systems

Keywords

Law

Reference:

Collections

Masters

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