Postgraduate Student 

of the Law Faculty of the Saint Petersburg State University 

The article is devoted to the consideration of the arguments in favour of the doctrine of expert witness immunity from civil suit. In the United Kingdom the expert witness immunity from civil suit dated back over 400 years. However, in 2011 the UK Supreme Court handed down judgment (Jones v. Kaney) abolishing the immunity expert witnesses have enjoyed. The court held that experts can be sued for negligence by the party which retained them. The author considers arguments for support immunity expert witnesses, which were used in the process of Jones v. Kaney case, and analyzes if they «work» in connection with national legal system. There are also given other examples of judicial practice. According to the prevailing Russian law enforcement practice judicial experts are not responsible for the quality of their expert opinion. This practice sets us thinking whether the experts in accordance with Russian law enjoy the immunity from civil suit as it was in the United Kingdom before the abolition of expert witness immunity. 

Keywords: expert witness immunity; immunity from civil suit; civil responsibility of expert; quality of expert opinion.

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Information about the author 

Zatonova D.Yu. (Saint Petersburg, Russia) – Postgraduate Student of the Law Faculty of the Saint Petersburg State University (199106, Russia, Saint Petersburg, 22 Liniya Vasilievskogo ostrova, 7; e-mail: [email protected]). 

Recommended citation 

Zatonova D.Yu. K voprosu ob immunitete eksperta ot privlecheniya k grazhdanskopravovoj otvetstvennosti [To a Question of an Expert Immunity from Civil Responsibility]. Вестник гражданского процесса = Herald of Civil Procedure, 2017, no. 3, p. 221–255. (In Russian) DOI: 10.24031/2226-0781-2017-7-3-221-255