The (alleged) failure of private expert evidence in Hungarian civil litigation

Abstract

The study examines why the Hungarian legislator decided to recognize the private expert commissioned by the testifying party as an expert on an equal footing with the court-appointed expert in the new Civil Procedure Code [Act CXXX of 2016 on the Civil Procedure Code (Ptk.)], entered into force on the 1^st of  January 2018, and why the legislative efforts to make this method of expert evidence more widely available failed. It examines why the legislative intention was not fully implemented in practice. This legal instrument is not completely unknown: it was also used in previous procedural codes, although there are differing opinions about its nature, application and evaluation. The Ptk. sought to definitively resolve this uncertainty - not entirely successfully. The aim of this research is to examine the institutional system and regulatory nature of private experts.

During the codification of expert evidence, the legislator placed great emphasis on the regulation of private expert evidence. Already during the codification, numerous questions arose regarding the legal institution, but after the 2016 Civil Code, the expected ideas were not reflected in legal practice. The study examines the institution of private experts based on the practical experiences of domestic law.