How can two or more experienced coatings or corrosion industry practitioners – having vast amounts of knowledge in their specialist field and with a history of obedience to the scientific doctrine of being fact-finders and fact-interpreters – look forensically at the same evidence connected, for example, with a coatings or lining failure, and then stand up in court as expert witnesses to become active campaigners for their client’s position and present totally different causes, mechanisms or consequences?

The dueling between expert witnesses in litigation diminishes the ethical standing of true technical experts, whose duty – as articulated in what is known as a Code of Conduct for Expert Witnesses in most legal jurisdictions – is to provide expertise, knowledge and independent evidence of facts and opinion to the court that it does not have of itself. This paper presents some examples of the sort of dueling that technical experts in disputes can resort to as they transform from technical experts into advocates.

Part I of this paper (NACE 2009, Paper 090381) provided advice to technical experts in their field who may be called as expert witnesses in dispute or court proceedings. It also described the process by which expert witnesses may provide evidence in a typical court situation.

Subject
Primers, Zinc rich coatings, Water, Coatings, Materials, Atmosphere, Joints, Liquids, Engineers, Zinc, Blistering, Lining, Samples
Keywords:
expert witness, advocacy, independence, litigation, forensic interpretation, ethics
© 2013 Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of AMPP. Positions and opinions advanced in this work are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of AMPP. Responsibility for the content of the work lies solely with the author(s).
2013
Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP)
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