A Study On The Legal Problems Relating To The Maritime Expert Evidence In China

Expert evidence is important and essential in legal litigations, with the aid of which the judge can find out the truth of a case efficiently and then make a fare judgement. Due to the complexity in nautical technique and marine engineering, expert evidence is widely used in admiralty litigaiions in the cases relating to limitation of liability in ships' collision accident, resource value appraisal, value appraisal of ship or cargo in accident, cautions resulting in the accidents, etc.Expert evidence is made use of more and more now in admiralty litigations. At the same time, like in other areas, there appear a lot of related problems in admiralty proceedings such as when expert evidence should be used, who can decide to use evidence, who can be asked for as an expert, how many appraisals should be enough, etc. The main reason about these questions is the lack of provisions governing expert evidence in evidence law in China.Integrating the advanced experience of expert opinions in foreign admiralty litigations and the reality of China, this essay first analyzes the reasons of the application and the nomination of experts, the carrying out of an appraisal, experts' report and so on, then tries to put forward suggestions to solve the problems in regulating the standards of expert qualification, limitation of the number of expert evidence, use of expert witness and so on.