Authors: JUDr. Lukáš Duffek, Mgr. Jaroslav Heyduk a Mgr. Lucie Kačerová
Publisher: epravo.cz
If the conclusions of the expert opinion do not appear to the court, can it replace them with its own reasoning? At first glance, this makes perfect sense – the court simply corrects what does not fit in its opinion and can decide based on it. At first glance, however, a fundamental problem can be revealed. Expert opinions are not created just to make the court’s job easier. The purpose of an expert opinion is to prove facts, the assessment of which requires expertise that the court does not have. If it is thus necessary to assess a certain question expertly, the court cannot subsequently intervene in the conclusions of the prepared opinion with its lay view. If the court thus has doubts about the correctness of the conclusions of the expert opinion, it must first invite the expert to supplement, explain or clarify its procedure and the conclusions of the opinion. If the doubts are not eliminated in this way by the courts, or if the report remains unclear or incomplete, the court may order a revision expert report; thus, under the conditions of Section 127a of the Civil Code, it may also admit as evidence also the report submitted by the party to the proceedings.
Since the participant’s proposal to draw up an audit report is, by its nature, evidence intended to call into question the credibility of the evidence adduced, such a review report may also be admissible after the concentration of the proceedings or in the appeal proceedings. We comment on this topic in more detail in our article, which can be found here.
