Court Experts UAE: Challenging Technical Findings Before Judgment

In many UAE civil and commercial disputes, the decisive issue is not purely legal. Construction cases turn on delay analysis, variations and measurement. Shareholder disputes may depend on company accounts. Banking claims can require reconciliation of facilities and payments. Insurance disputes may require valuation or causation analysis. Real-estate cases can depend on engineering defects, rental calculations or completion status.

For those issues, UAE courts frequently appoint technical experts. The expert does not replace the judge, but the expert's work can shape the factual record on which judgment is eventually based. A party that waits until the final hearing to attack an unfavourable technical conclusion may discover that the most important procedural opportunity has already passed.

The central framework is Federal Decree-Law No. 35 of 2022 Promulgating the Law of Evidence in Civil and Commercial Transactions, particularly Articles 109 to 125. The professional duties of experts are also regulated by Federal Decree-Law No. 21 of 2022 Regulating the Profession of Experts before Judicial Authorities and its 2024 Executive Regulations.

The most important practical rule is this: the expert stage should be treated as an evidentiary hearing, not as an administrative step between pleadings and judgment.

Scope of this article

This article focuses on onshore UAE civil and commercial litigation governed by the federal Evidence Law and Civil Procedure Code, subject to the implementation of the relevant federal or local judicial authority. DIFC and ADGM Courts operate under their own procedural and evidentiary frameworks and should be analysed separately.

The court appoints an expert for technical matters

Article 109 of the Evidence Law allows the court or supervising judge, either on its own initiative or at a party's request, to appoint one or more experts or an eligible local or international consulting firm to give an opinion on technical matters needed to decide the case.

The expert's technical knowledge and experience must be appropriate to the subject matter of the dispute. If the parties agree on the selection of an expert or experts, the court is to approve their agreement.

This distinction between technical questions and legal questions is fundamental. The expert may analyse accounts, engineering facts, measurements, valuation, records or other matters within the assigned specialty. The court remains responsible for interpreting the law, deciding legal rights and issuing judgment.

The assignment decision defines the expert's jurisdiction

Article 111 requires the operative part of the appointment decision to state the expert's task and powers in detail, together with the report deadline, the hearing at which the report will be considered and any urgent measures the expert is authorised to take.

That appointment decision should be one of the first documents reviewed when preparing an expert challenge.

A strong objection often starts by comparing the report with the precise mandate:

Did the expert answer every question assigned by the court?
Did the expert decide an issue that was not referred?
Did the expert assume facts that the court never asked the expert to determine?
Did the expert answer a legal question instead of a technical one?
Did the expert rely on a method inconsistent with the assigned task?
Did the expert fail to inspect an asset or review a record that the mandate made central?

An argument that a conclusion is “wrong” is usually weaker than an argument showing exactly how the report departed from the court's assignment.

Challenge conflicts before debating the merits

Article 113 requires the expert, before starting the task, to disclose any relationship with the parties or any interest in the case. Failure to make the required disclosure can lead to removal and repayment of amounts received, without prejudice to disciplinary consequences and potential compensation claims.

Article 114 separately permits a party to request disqualification where circumstances make it probable that the expert cannot perform impartially.

The statutory examples include:

specified family relationships with a litigant;
acting as a litigant's attorney-in-fact in private business;
being a custodian, guardian, endowment administrator or similar representative of a litigant;
employment by a litigant; and
outstanding litigation with a litigant, subject to the statutory qualification concerning deliberately created conflicts.

The disqualification procedure is fast. The expert has up to two business days to respond, and the court or supervising judge decides within three business days after the response or expiry of the response period. The ruling is final.

A conflict challenge should therefore be raised immediately after the relevant facts become known. It should not be held back as a tactical objection to be raised only after the expert reaches an unfavourable conclusion.

Professional independence is reinforced by the Experts Law

Federal Decree-Law No. 21 of 2022 imposes separate professional obligations on registered experts.

Article 14 requires experts to perform accurately, honestly and sincerely, preserve confidentiality, avoid direct or indirect interests in the subject of the case, and decline work where the expert has previously advised a party on the same dispute or reviewed its documents in the prohibited circumstances.

Article 15 requires withdrawal in specified conflict situations. The regulatory framework therefore treats independence as a professional obligation in addition to the procedural disqualification rules under the Evidence Law.

The expert can obtain documents and inspect property

Article 115 gives the expert substantial fact-finding powers within the assignment.

The expert may hear party statements and comments, and where authorised may hear other persons. The expert can request books, records, documents, papers or items considered necessary and can inspect facilities, locations and objects relevant to the task.

Article 116 prevents persons from unjustifiably obstructing the expert's work. The expert may refer obstruction to the court, which can take appropriate measures. The expert must also report obstacles that prevent completion of the task or show that a wider mandate is required.

This means document strategy matters early. A party should not assume that an important ledger, email, technical drawing or payment record can simply be introduced later if it was available during the expert phase but never properly presented.

Do not submit a document dump

Thousands of pages of unstructured documents rarely produce a strong expert result. The expert's final reasoning should be tested against an organised evidentiary record.

For a technical submission, consider using:

a chronology;
a document index;
a transaction or invoice schedule;
a payment reconciliation;
a variation register;
a defect matrix;
a delay-event table;
an explanation of the calculation methodology;
cross-references to contractual clauses; and
a short statement explaining why each category of evidence matters to the expert's assigned questions.

The objective is to make the technical route from evidence to conclusion easy to audit.

The expert's report must show its reasoning

Article 117 requires the report to describe the assigned task, the work actually performed, the parties' statements, documents and evidence submitted, the technical analysis, opinions of any assisting experts and the final technical opinion with the grounds relied upon stated precisely and clearly.

This creates a useful challenge framework. A technically weak report may fail because:

the factual inputs are incomplete;
important evidence is omitted;
the method is not explained;
a calculation cannot be reproduced;
the reasoning jumps from evidence to conclusion;
the report adopts one party's assertion without testing it;
conflicting records are not reconciled;
technical assumptions are unsupported; or
the final conclusion does not answer the court's question.

The initial report is the critical objection stage

Article 119 materially changes how parties should approach court expertise.

Before filing the final report with the court, the expert must provide the parties with an initial report. The parties must be given a period of at least three business days to submit comments and observations, and the statutory process requires those comments to be addressed within the prescribed period before the final report is completed.

Once the final report is filed, Article 119(3) sharply restricts new objections. A party generally may not introduce new objections after filing unless the objection is genuinely new and based on evidence that could not have arisen until after the report was filed.

The draft-report stage is not a courtesy review. It is the principal procedural window for technical objections that already exist.

What an effective objection memorandum should contain

A useful objection should identify the exact conclusion challenged and then show why it is technically or evidentially unsustainable.

A practical structure is:

Finding challenged. Quote or identify the page, table or conclusion.
Reason for challenge. State the precise error rather than using broad disagreement.
Evidence ignored or misread. Identify the document and relevant portion.
Correct technical approach. Explain the alternative method or calculation.
Impact. Show how correction changes the conclusion, amount, responsibility or timeline.
Requested correction. State exactly what the expert should revise, calculate, inspect or answer.

Objections should be prioritised. Ten material errors supported by evidence are generally more useful than one hundred repetitive comments that obscure the decisive issues.

Challenge methodology, not just outcome

If the expert calculates a figure of AED 8 million and the party says the correct figure is AED 3 million, the court still needs to understand why.

A methodology challenge may focus on:

wrong accounting period;
double counting;
failure to deduct payments or credits;
wrong contractual measurement method;
incorrect baseline programme;
unsupported delay assumptions;
failure to separate concurrent causes;
wrong valuation date;
comparison of non-comparable assets;
failure to distinguish principal from interest or penalties;
use of data outside the court's mandate; or
failure to test the reliability of a party-generated spreadsheet.

A replicable calculation is much easier to defend than a conclusion that cannot be reconstructed from the report.

Challenge factual assumptions expressly

Experts frequently need to make assumptions where records conflict or are incomplete. Those assumptions should be exposed and tested.

Examples include assuming that:

an unsigned variation was approved;
an invoice proves delivery;
a payment relates to a particular contract;
a delay notice proves responsibility;
a property defect existed at handover;
a shareholder withdrawal was authorised;
an account entry reflects a genuine transaction; or
a completion certificate resolves all outstanding defects.

The objection should distinguish evidence from assumption. If the expert has chosen one factual version over another, the report should explain the technical basis for doing so within the scope of the mandate.

Legal conclusions should be separated from technical analysis

Article 109 authorises expert evidence on technical matters needed for the case. The court remains responsible for adjudication.

Accordingly, a party should identify where the expert has moved from technical analysis into a conclusion such as:

a contract is invalid;
a clause is legally unenforceable;
a party has legally waived a right;
a claim is legally time-barred;
a termination was legally justified; or
a legal duty exists solely because the expert says so.

The expert may analyse facts relevant to those issues. The final legal consequence remains a matter for the court.

The expert should respond to material objections

The Article 119 initial-report procedure exists so that errors can be tested before the final report reaches the court.

A final report should therefore be reviewed not only for its conclusions but for how it dealt with the objections submitted. Important questions include:

Was the objection addressed at all?
Did the expert answer the actual point raised?
Was contrary evidence analysed?
Was a calculation corrected?
Did the expert give a technical explanation for maintaining the original conclusion?
Did the response introduce a new assumption that now needs court attention?

A bare statement that “the objection is rejected” may be vulnerable where the underlying technical issue required actual analysis.

After the final report: use Article 121 strategically

Article 121 gives the court or supervising judge broad powers at any stage of proceedings, either on its own initiative or at a party's request.

The court may:

summon the expert to discuss the report orally or in writing and put questions to the expert;
allow the parties to question the expert;
order the expert to correct deficiencies, shortcomings or errors, including with another expert working jointly; or
appoint another expert or experts to correct the deficiencies or reconsider the matter.

These are distinct remedies and should be requested according to the problem.

When to ask for expert questioning

Questioning can be appropriate where the report contains reasoning that is unclear but potentially capable of explanation.

Useful questions should be narrow and technical, for example:

Which documents support the assumed commencement date?
Where is the payment of AED 600,000 reflected in the reconciliation?
Why was invoice 18 counted twice?
What engineering standard was used?
Why was the contemporaneous inspection report disregarded?
How does the delay model account for the employer-caused event in the same period?

The purpose is not to repeat closing submissions. It is to expose the technical path that produced the conclusion.

When to seek a supplementary or corrected report

A correction request may be preferable where the problem is identifiable and curable, such as:

an omitted payment;
a mathematical error;
failure to analyse a specified document;
incomplete inspection;
a missing valuation step;
failure to answer one part of the mandate; or
an inconsistent table.

The request should identify the exact deficiency and the additional work required rather than merely asking the court to “return the report to the expert”.

When to request another expert

A replacement or additional expert may be justified where the defect goes beyond a correctable mistake.

Examples may include:

the required specialty is materially different from the appointed expert's expertise;
the report depends on a fundamentally inappropriate methodology;
essential evidence was repeatedly ignored despite objections;
the task has expanded into another technical discipline;
the report is internally contradictory on core issues;
the expert cannot explain or reproduce the calculation; or
the court identifies substantial shortcomings that require reconsideration.

Article 121 expressly permits a new expert to use information gathered by the earlier expert. A replacement does not necessarily mean that every step in the first expertise process must be repeated.

The expert's opinion is not binding on the court

Article 122(2) states expressly that, subject to a special pre-dispute or litigation agreement to accept an expert's result, the expert's opinion does not bind the court.

If the court does not rely on the expert opinion in whole or in part, however, it must state its reasons in the judgment.

This means a party challenging the report ultimately needs to give the judge a reasoned alternative capable of supporting judgment. Simply proving that an expert could have written a better report does not automatically establish the party's substantive case.

Be careful with agreements to accept the expert's result

Article 122(1) allows litigants—even before proceedings—to agree to accept the result of an expert's report. The court will rely on that agreement unless the report contains matters contrary to public order.

Commercial contracts that contain expert-determination clauses should therefore be reviewed carefully. An agreed binding expert mechanism is legally different from an ordinary court-appointed report whose opinion remains subject to judicial evaluation.

The court can use an expert report from another case

Article 125 permits the court to rely on an expert report filed in another case instead of appointing a new expert, while preserving the parties' right to discuss the matters contained in that report.

If this occurs, a party should still examine:

whether the factual record is actually the same;
whether the parties and contractual documents differ;
whether the earlier report considered the issue now in dispute;
whether later evidence changes the technical conclusion; and
whether the report was prepared for a materially different mandate.

Expert delay and party obstruction can have consequences

Article 118 deals with delay and negligent performance. An expert who fails to perform without acceptable excuse, performs negligently or files late without justification can be removed and ordered to refund amounts received.

If the court finds that a litigant caused the delay, the litigant can be fined between AED 3,000 and AED 10,000 and may lose the right to rely on the expert appointment decision.

Litigation strategy should therefore distinguish legitimate evidentiary requests from tactics that obstruct the expert's work.

Current 2026 procedural developments strengthen technical review

Federal Decree-Law No. 22 of 2025, effective from 1 January 2026, amended parts of the Civil Procedure Code and strengthened the use of technical expertise in specialised judicial divisions.

Under the amended framework, qualifying specialised divisions can use one or more local or international experts to prepare or review expert reports. The court can discuss the reports with the relevant experts and order deficiencies or technical shortcomings to be completed or corrected.

This development reinforces a broader direction in UAE civil procedure: expert evidence is expected to be technically reviewable rather than treated as an unexplained conclusion.

The expert's professional record can matter separately from the case objection

Federal Decree-Law No. 21 of 2022 and Cabinet Resolution No. 17 of 2024 regulate the expert profession, registration, performance assessment and technical inspection.

The Ministry may assess expert performance, and technical inspectors can review expert work. Administrative sanctions were also further regulated in 2025.

A disciplinary complaint, however, is not a substitute for procedural objections in the pending case. If a party wants the trial court not to rely on a report, the evidentiary objections still need to be raised within the case and within the relevant procedural windows.

Dubai's local judicial expertise infrastructure

Dubai also established the Dubai Judicial Expertise Centre under Law No. 11 of 2025. The local institutional framework operates alongside the federal legislation governing evidence and the expert profession.

This illustrates why parties should check the rules and administrative practice of the actual court handling the dispute in addition to the federal statutory framework.

A practical expert-challenge matrix

Problem	Best procedural focus
Expert has a conflict or undisclosed relationship	Seek disqualification promptly under Articles 113–114 and rely on professional conflict rules where relevant.
Expert exceeded the mandate	Compare the report directly with the Article 111 assignment decision.
Important documents were ignored	Identify each document, its relevance and the technical conclusion affected.
Calculation is wrong	Provide a reproducible alternative calculation and isolate the error.
Methodology is inappropriate	Explain the correct technical method and why the chosen method distorts the result.
Report contains a legal conclusion	Separate the technical facts from the legal issue reserved to the court.
Initial report is adverse	Use the Article 119 objection window immediately; do not save existing objections for later.
Final report fails to answer objections	Request questioning, correction or supplementary expertise under Article 121.
Defects are fundamental	Seek appointment of another expert or expert committee where justified.
Court appears likely to adopt report	Give the court a concise evidentiary and technical reason why the disputed conclusion cannot safely support judgment.

A practical checklist before the initial report arrives

Read the assignment order line by line. Build the case around the questions the court actually referred.
Check the expert's specialty and independence. Raise conflict issues immediately.
Build a clean technical record. Chronology, schedules and indexed evidence should be prepared before meetings with the expert.
Identify the decisive calculations. Make them reproducible.
Prepare for inspection. Know what the expert should inspect and what documents should be available.
Use contemporaneous records. Technical cases are usually stronger when supported by documents created during the events rather than later narratives.
Anticipate assumptions. Identify factual gaps the expert may otherwise fill implicitly.
Prepare your objection team early. The Article 119 timeframe is short.

A practical checklist for the initial report

Check every assigned question. Mark answered, partly answered and unanswered items.
Reconcile every material figure. Trace totals back to source documents.
Identify omitted evidence. Explain why each omitted document changes the result.
Separate factual, technical and legal errors. Do not mix them into one general objection.
Challenge methodology specifically. Name the method used and the better alternative.
Check internal consistency. Tables, narrative conclusions and appendices should agree.
State the correction requested. Give the expert something precise to answer.
File all existing objections now. Article 119(3) sharply limits new objections after the final report.

Key takeaway

Court-appointed expertise in UAE civil and commercial litigation is a structured evidentiary process. The expert's assignment is defined by the court; the expert must be independent; the report must identify the work performed, evidence considered, technical analysis and grounds for the conclusion; and the parties receive a specific pre-filing opportunity to challenge the initial report.

The most important tactical point is timing. Article 119 makes the initial report the principal stage for objections that already exist. Once the final report is filed, genuinely new objections are narrowly restricted.

If material problems remain, Article 121 gives the court significant tools: questioning the expert, permitting party questioning, ordering correction, adding another expert or commissioning fresh expertise. The report is not ordinarily binding under Article 122, but a party challenging it should give the court a technically coherent alternative rather than relying on general disagreement.

HZ Legal can assist companies, contractors, shareholders, banks, insurers and individuals with UAE expert proceedings, technical evidence strategy, expert-report objections, forensic document review, supplementary expertise requests and litigation submissions challenging or defending court-appointed expert findings.

Official and authoritative sources

This article provides general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Expert procedures can depend on the court, local judicial authority, appointment order, technical specialty, report timetable and case-management directions. Objection periods can be short. Specific advice should be obtained immediately when an expert is appointed or an initial report is circulated.