Court-ordered expertise
An investigative measure a court entrusts to a listed technician, run as an adversarial process, whose report does not bind the court yet decides it in practice.
Article 238 of the French Code of Civil Procedure forbids the expert from expressing legal opinions, and article 145 allows an expertise to be ordered before any trial where there is a legitimate reason to preserve or establish evidence of a fact. That second route, through interim proceedings, is how most construction defect files open in France, often years before the first claim on the merits. A court-ordered expertise is the investigative measure by which a judge instructs a technician to advise on a question of fact the court cannot settle alone. What sets it apart from a private assessment is appointment and procedure. The expert is named by the judge rather than by a party, sits on an official list and can be challenged. The work is adversarial: each party attends, produces documents and files written submissions the expert must answer. The ban in article 238 holds poorly, since the line between fact and law is porous and many reports cross it. The report does not bind the court, which may depart from it by giving reasons. In most technical cases it decides the outcome all the same.
Article 238 of the French Code of Civil Procedure forbids the expert from expressing legal opinions, and article 145 allows an expertise to be obtained before any trial where there is a legitimate reason to preserve or establish evidence of a fact. That second route is how most construction defect files open in France, often years before the first substantive claim is filed.
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