THE QUERY PROJECT - European Commission - Europa

Co u n t R y R E P o R t S
(We confirm that we have personally conducted the task
assigned to us and certify that the report represents the best of
our knowledge.)
In case of civil litigation, the expert works with all the involved
litigant parties and their lawyers according to the respect of the
contradictory principle. Any correspondence with a single party is
fully forbidden and would cancel all the expert valuation. At each
step, by means of an intermediary written report, he checks the
agreement of the parties and sends this report to the magistrate
in charge to follow the affair for the court.
At the end the expert, submits his conclusions to the litigant
parties at least 3 weeks before he finishes the final report, after
having answered to any question and remark received from every
party during these 3 weeks. One copy of the final report is sent to
each party and to the magistrate following the affair.
In criminal as well as in civil procedures, the weighting of the
expert’s conclusions lies in the hands of the court. In some cases
(about 3 – 5%) the president of the court convenes the expert
during the judgement to explain his work and to answer to any
questions from the president, the public prosecutor and the
lawyers.
Apart from being hired by the judge (or sometimes directly by
the public prosecutor), an expert can also be hired by a litigant
party or an accused. The outcome is a private written report sent
to the party and its lawyer, who decides whether or not to hand
it to the court.
The court may fully ignore this private report, but it is one way
to justify an appeal by giving new elements allowing new investigations
and to obtain that an expert be hired. In such a case the
expert hired by the court will necessarily be another than the one
hired by the litigant party.
In any case, due to the strong position of the court’s expert it is
rather difficult to convince the court otherwise, and the position of
the private expert is rather weak, even if he is officially certified.
The certified expert doesn’t need to certify his testimony by
oath. He has given this one time at the Appeal Court when he
was certified and was put on the list. The exception is when he is
called by the court during a judgement.
working conditions
Most of the judicial experts for road accidents are automobile
experts – accidentologists or reconstructionists are very few.
Experts using numerical simulation are officially quite unknown.
They were 3 or 4 three years ago, and now, thanks to ITRA (Institut
Technique de Reconstruction d’Accidents), about 30 experts are
using PC-Crash after having got specific training (between 3 and
9 days so far). See www.itra-expert.fr, just open now.
Judicial experts work as independents, most often alone and
at partial time.
The payment varies according to the area. It is 76 € per hour
(without VAT) at the moment in the Paris region, less in other
regions. The funds are provided by the Public Treasury to each
court.
In civil litigation, the litigant parties have to pay an advance on
costs that lies in the range of 1000 – 3000 €, depending on the
complexity of the case (as the judge sees it…). After one to three
meetings and as soon as possible, the expert with the agreement
of the parties proposes a work programme and a forecast for
the total costs. On this base, the judge can ask for a additional
payment in advance by the litigant. At the end, the insurance
company and the litigant share the whole costs.
Working fields
Within the vehicular accidents field there is very few specialisation:
about 93% of experts are classified as experts en automobiles,
6% for car-body and 1% as accidentologists. Sometimes, few
automobile experts add a mention like “pneumatics and relation
of vehicle to the road” or “electronics” etc. So, the capability to
choose for the judge is very narrow.
Additionally, the expert may be hired by the public prosecutor
in case of severe accident to assist the police at the scene. At this
point we could mention that it is the normal practice inside the Val
d’Oise department, on a voluntary basis, after a common initiative
taken about 8 years ago between a public prosecutor and the ITA
experts association.
Associations, institutions, activities
As already mentioned, there are two general organisations
gathering the judicial experts: 11005 peoples (distributed in
the different Appeal Courts) inside the “Fédération Nationale
des Compagnies d’ Experts Judiciaires” and a company for each
Appeal Court.
Each of them organises some training sessions either very general
(all specialities together), or sometimes specific to a peculiar
speciality. They are also the representatives near Appeal Court or
other jurisdictions as well as near the Ministry of Justice or the
Government to follow or initiate evolutions of relevant laws.
ITA (Institut Technique d’Accidentologie) is a private association
trying to improve the qualification of the expert by technical one
day workshops with the help of car manufacturers and suppliers.
Once every 18 months as an average, ITA organises also a large
and professional symposium on interesting questions. The last one
was on “drugs and road accidents”, the next one will be on “roads
infrastructure and accidents” will be held on march 2005 hosted
by the Assemblée Nationale, our parliament.
Few words more about ITRA (Institut Technique de Reconstruction
d’Accidents), the only body trying to establish an accident reconstructionists’
network in a country where a lot is still to do, due
to the absence of university courses on accident reconstruction.
Our approach to the problem is to develop the use of numerical
simulation and to offer more training sessions for novice experts,
average users and more experienced groups (in regard to numerical
simulation). Doing so, we would like to enlarge knowledge in
regard to the exact unfolding of an accident, better estimation of
EES and correct impact speed calculations.
A very positive hope for the development of a better judicial
accidentology is founded on two strong accidentology
teams entirely devoted to research and existing for 30 years.
One works for the administration through INRETS, the other for
car manufacturers through LAB (Laboratoire d’ Accidentologie,
de Biomécanique et d’ étude du comportement des conducteurs
– Laboratory for Accidentology, Biomechanics and the Research
of Driver Behaviour). Both institutions published their results
extensively in various journals and congresses.
It is easy to understand how helpful an European co-operation
would be at a time where things have come into a move regarding
accident reconstruction in France.