Author(s): Noor Akief Dabbas
It is in the context of the arbitration tribunals' endeavor to settle the cases they entertain that they may find themselves in need to seek the assistance of expertise in technical details that have their own specificities to help them decide the case. In fact, the one who performs the expertise is required to meet impartiality and independence; otherwise it is permissible to request his dismissal. In this regard, the Jordanian legislator has not dealt with regulating the subject of the experts ’dismissal within the framework of the arbitration case except for the jurisdiction of the arbitral tribunal to decide on issues of dismissal in Article (32/J) of the Arbitration Law. Yet, we find that the Jordanian legislator, and in the Civil Procedures Law, article (90/2), did merely refer to the provisions of the judges’ dismissal stipulated in Article (134) of the same Law. Therefore, we sought to study the possibility of the expert’s dismissal in the arbitration case for the same reasons for which the arbitrator or the judge may be dismissed if achieved as well as the possibility of dismissing the expert for reasons of unfitness stipulated in this law or in terms of the reasons set in the provision of article (7) of the Instructions on the Experience Affairs of 2018 in addition to approaching the legal procedures to be followed in that dismissal and the legal impacts thereof together with consulting with the rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) set for the international commercial arbitration in this regard as they are international rules of reference as well as the Rules of Evidence issued by the International Bar Association (IBA). Based on this, the study reached conclusions, the most important of which is that the reasons for the expert’s dismissal in the arbitration case are not related to the common law, but to the private interest of the parties. Actually, the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules considered the qualifications and capabilities of the expert to be one of the elements required for his acceptance in the first place, thus adding an explicit reason for the expert's dismissal in the arbitration case that was not stipulated by the Jordanian legislator in the Arbitration Law with a distinction between the expert appointed by the tribunal and the expert appointed by the parties. Further, the Jordanian Arbitration Law and UNCITRAL rules did not specify a specific period of time during which the expert’s dismissal may be requested while the decision issued by the arbitration tribunal in consideration of the expert’s dismissal request may not be challenged by any method of appeal, which matter requires the Jordanian legislator to amend the current Arbitration Law by adding provisions that deal with the expert’s dismissal, given the great importance of the expertise required by the technical nature of arbitration cases.