EXPERT OPINION AS A UNITY OF FORM AND CONTENT

Abstract

The article examines the issue of the unity of content and form of expert opinion in civil proceedings in Ukraine. It is noted that this issue is the subject of constant scientific interest in domestic and foreign doctrine. Its relevance is due to the need to ensure the possibility of verification (checking) by the court and the participants in the proceedings of both the course of the expert examination and its final result.

The article analyzes the category of “content” through methodology, formal logic, theory of knowledge, and philosophical science. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the form of the expert's conclusion and its correlation with the content. As a result, it is concluded that the content determines the legal force of the expert's conclusion, determines its legal consequences and significance for the participants in the proceedings, while the form is a means of its external expression and procedural implementation.

It has also been established that the normatively defined structural form of an expert opinion performs an important procedural function in the mechanism of evidence in civil proceedings. Compliance with it ensures that the court and the participants in the proceedings can fully verify the expert opinion as a means of evidence, in particular with regard to its relevance, admissibility, and reliability.

It has been confirmed that the structured form of an expert opinion makes it possible to trace the logical structure, internal consistency, and consistency of the content, and allows establishing a causal link between the initial data, the course of the study, the methods used, the results obtained, and the conclusions formulated by the expert. This ensures that both the court and the parties to the proceedings can verify the validity of the results obtained, which is directly related to the implementation of the adversarial principle and guarantees of a fair trial.