Aussies Consider Ban on Party-Retained Experts

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, a law reform commission in New South Wales has proposed unclogging court dockets by banning party-retained experts. "Having a lot of expert witnesses being called by each party can gum up the court," says one commission member. Some Australian courts have already implemented the alternative of having all expert testimony come from one court-approved witness.

Reform is all well and good, but halfway measures will get us nowhere. Lay witnesses often do far more than experts to bog down a trial and confuse the jury -- especially when the parties get to call whichever ones happen to be favorable to their position.

And all those documents offered as trial exhibits? Jurors probably don't understand 'em anyway, and the photocopying charges can be astronomical.

Someone should take a hard look at all this. Whose idea was it, anyway, to give each party in a lawsuit the chance to present evidence of its own choosing? Won't each side tend to offer a one-sided point of view? How on earth can the truth emerge from that?