The Russian Government Has Submitted a Draft Law Limiting the Grounds for Reducing Court-Appointed Experts’ Remuneration

The Russian Government has submitted to the State Duma a draft law proposing to regulate the procedure for reducing the remuneration payable to court-appointed experts in civil, commercial and administrative proceedings[1].

The draft law has been prepared in furtherance of Ruling No. 6-P of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation dated 11 February 2026[2], in which the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation indicated the need to establish criteria for the permissible reduction of an expert’s remuneration previously agreed and approved by the court.

Context

Under the current regulation, the amount of an expert’s remuneration is determined by the court before the expert examination is conducted, in agreement with the parties and by agreement with the expert organisation or expert. This procedure makes it possible to determine the estimated cost of the examination in advance; however, at that stage it is not always possible to finally assess the actual scope of work, the complexity of the examination and the quality of the future expert report.

After examining the expert report, the court is able to assess whether the amount previously determined corresponds to the work actually performed. However, the current regulation does not establish clear criteria according to which such amount may be reduced. This creates risks both for the parties to the dispute, who may bear the costs of an expert examination where the remuneration is clearly overstated or the expert examination has been improperly performed, and for experts, whose remuneration may be substantially reduced after the work has already been completed without predictable grounds.

Proposed amendments

The draft law proposes amendments to Article 107 of the Commercial Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, Article 95 of the Civil Procedure Code of the Russian Federation and Article 108 of the Administrative Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, establishing a common approach: the amount of an expert’s remuneration determined by the court may be reduced after the expert report has been examined, either on the court’s own initiative, taking into account the parties’ views, or upon a motion by the parties, only in the cases and in accordance with the procedure expressly provided for by the relevant procedural code.

1. The procedure for considering the reduction of remuneration will be introduced

The issue of reducing remuneration must be considered at a court hearing before the final decision in the case is adopted. When this issue is considered, the expert must be summoned to the court hearing and may submit additional substantiation of the amount of remuneration.

2. A list of grounds for reducing remuneration will be established

The draft law provides for several grounds on which the court may reduce the amount of an expert’s remuneration:

• absence in the expert report of conclusions on the questions put to the expert by the court and falling within the expert’s area of special knowledge, with the reduction being proportionate to the scope of the examination actually performed. At the same time, the amount of remuneration may not be reduced if such conclusions could not be made due to the insufficiency of materials provided for the preparation of the report;

• inconsistency of certain expert conclusions with the provisions of the regulatory legal acts specified in the expert report and used in forming the relevant conclusions, as well as a material breach by the expert of procedural requirements or the rules of legislation on state forensic expert activity. However, such breach must result in the expert report being declared inadmissible evidence;

• failure to submit the expert report within the time limit established by the ruling appointing the expert examination, if the expert did not provide a reasoned notice of the impossibility of conducting the expert examination in due time or of the impossibility of conducting it;

• clear excessiveness of the amount of remuneration, established by the court on the basis of an assessment of the uniqueness and complexity of the expert examination, the volume of materials reviewed, and the cost of similar services provided by other experts.

Lidings comments

The draft law is aimed at eliminating the uncertainty that allowed a substantial reduction of previously agreed expert remuneration without clear statutory criteria. The proposed amendments do not exclude judicial control over the reasonableness of expert examination costs, but limit the court’s discretion to established grounds and introduce additional guarantees for the protection of the property rights of experts and expert organisations.

For parties to court proceedings, the proposed amendments may become an instrument of more predictable control over the amount of court costs relating to expert examinations.