台灣醫療糾紛訴訟中實施並發證據的專家證人制度之探討

Implementing a Concurrent Evidence Expert Witness System in Taiwan’s Medical Malpractice Litigation

台灣醫療糾紛的訴訟效率低且相當失敗，提供專家意見的醫事審議委員會需要數月或一年以上才能作出鑑定報告，且法院又經常要委託其他的再鑑定，更進一步拖延鑑定過程的時間。
學者推薦使訴訟程序更有效的一種可能的改革是實施「英美」專家證人制度，專家由當事人聘請，且必須在法庭上作證。這一建議往往過於籠統，且沒有認清在不同的普通法司法管轄。
本文介紹了美國和英國的專家證人制度，並討論了在英國最近修正的民事訴訟法，借助來自澳大利亞所發展的，允許審判中使用並發證據。
這表明，儘管它可能更利於台灣尋找來自與它共享法律傳統的大陸法系國家的指引，有可能仍然值得借用發展自普通法司法管轄的某些程序法，以改革令人失望的制度。

Medical malpractice litigation in Taiwan is marred by inefficiency. Medical review committees that provide expert opinion take months or years to produce reports, and oftentimes courts commission additional assessments that further delay the process. One possible reform recommended by scholars to make the litigation process more efficient is the implementation of an “Anglo-American” expert witness system where experts are hired by the parties and must testify in court. This recommendation is often overly general and fails to recognize the differences in the expert witness systems of various common law jurisdictions. This article introduces the expert witness systems in the United States and the United Kingdom and discusses recent amendments to civil procedure rules in the United Kingdom that allow for concurrent evidence to be used in trial, a development borrowed from Australia. It suggests that although it may be more beneficial for Taiwan to look for guidance from civil law countries with which it shares a legal tradition, there may still be value in borrowing certain procedural law developments from common law jurisdictions to reform the broken system.