UAE courts appoint independent accounting experts because commercial and civil disputes frequently involve technical financial questions that fall outside the ordinary scope of judicial knowledge. The authority to appoint experts is granted by the Federal Evidence Law, and the procedure reflects a deliberate separation between the judicial function of applying the law and the technical function of establishing the financial facts.
The Judicial Rationale
A judge in a commercial dispute can determine which party's legal position is correct, apply the relevant statutes and case law, and reach a judgment on liability. What a judge is not trained to do is independently calculate the financial damages arising from a breach, determine the fair value of a business using discounted cash flow methodology, or reconstruct the accounting records of an entity to establish what transactions actually occurred.
These technical questions require specialist knowledge. The Evidence Law addresses this by providing courts with authority to appoint independent experts from the Ministry of Justice's approved register. The expert's function is not to decide the case: it is to provide the court with the technical analysis needed to decide it. The court retains its judicial function; the expert serves the court's fact-finding function in areas where that requires financial expertise.
The independence of the expert is essential to this function. An expert who answers to one party cannot be relied upon to provide the court with an objective analysis. The appointment from a ministry register, the prohibition on parties selecting their preferred expert, and the requirement that the expert answers the court's questions rather than the parties' questions, all serve to protect the independence that makes the report useful to the court.
When Appointment Is Most Commonly Ordered
Courts appoint accounting experts most frequently in the following categories of dispute:
Damages and lost profit claims. When a claimant seeks compensation for financial loss arising from a breach of contract, the calculation of the loss requires technical analysis. The expert applies a recognised methodology, examines the financial records, and produces a figure that the court can adopt or analyse alongside other evidence.
Shareholder disputes. When shareholders disagree about the value of a company, the distribution of profits, or the accuracy of the financial statements, an independent expert examines the underlying records and provides findings that the court uses to resolve the factual dispute.
Construction and infrastructure disputes. Disputes involving cost overruns, variations, delay damages, and final account calculations in large construction projects regularly require expert analysis of voluminous financial and technical records.
Business sale and acquisition disputes. Where a purchaser claims that the financial statements at the time of acquisition misrepresented the company's position, an expert is needed to reconstruct the financial position as it actually was and to assess the difference between what was represented and what the records show.
The Difference in Weight Between Court Experts and Party Experts
The distinction between a court-appointed expert and a party-commissioned expert has significant practical consequences. A party-commissioned expert report is submitted as evidence for that party. The court assesses it alongside the rest of that party's evidence and gives it whatever weight the court considers appropriate.
A court-appointed expert report carries presumptive authority. It is not evidence for one side: it is the court's own technical resource. Courts in the UAE regularly adopt court-appointed expert findings on financial matters without independent re-examination, particularly where no credible methodological objection has been raised within the formal objection procedure.
This does not mean a court-appointed expert is beyond challenge. Methodological errors, mandate overreach, and reliance on unverified documents are all valid objection grounds. But the procedural and evidential threshold for displacing a court-appointed expert's findings is significantly higher than for challenging a party expert's report. Parties who anticipate adverse findings from a court-appointed expert should engage technical legal and accounting expertise to identify objection grounds before the objection deadline passes.