Appraiser Expert Witness Fees in Georgia: Who Pays for What

When a property value is contested, the appraisal report is usually only the first piece of work. After it come preparation, sometimes a deposition, and sometimes a hearing or a trial. Georgia law decides who pays for some of that time. My engagement terms decide the rest. This post keeps the two apart: first what the statute requires, then how I bill.

I do not publish my rates. Every litigation assignment is quoted on its own, in writing, before any work begins.

Key Takeaways

• The law: the deposing side pays. Under O.C.G.A. 9-11-26(b)(4)(A)(ii), a party that takes discovery from the other side's testifying expert must pay the expert a reasonable fee for the time spent responding. If anyone disputes what is reasonable, the court decides.
• Paying is not retaining. The client and the named intended users are fixed in the engagement letter. The opposing party and the opposing attorney are neither, whatever they pay for.
• My terms: engagement first. A non-refundable engagement fee with a not-to-exceed cap is due before any work begins and before I can be named as a testifying or non-testifying expert.
• My terms: two rates. One hourly rate covers all non-testimony work. A separate testimony rate applies at deposition or trial, with a three-hour minimum, and a testimony day runs door to door.
• The winner is not automatically repaid. Georgia's general rule, in O.C.G.A. 13-6-11, is that the expenses of litigation are not awarded as damages, with specific exceptions your attorney can assess.
• The fee never depends on the answer. Georgia law makes a fee contingent on the value reached, or on the outcome, grounds for discipline of the appraiser.

What the Work Consists Of

Expert work in a valuation dispute usually comes in four parts.

1. The appraisal, or a review. Either I develop my own opinion of value, or I review the other side's appraisal. Georgia law defines appraisal review as developing and communicating an opinion about the quality of another appraiser's work. It answers a different question from a new appraisal: whether the report in front of you holds together.
2. Preparation. Reading the pleadings, the opposing report, and any deposition transcripts, and meeting with counsel.
3. Deposition. Sworn testimony before trial, taken by the other side.
4. Hearing or trial testimony. Time in court, including time spent waiting to be called.

In Georgia, an appraiser's testimony about a specific property is treated as an oral appraisal report under the appraiser licensing statute, O.C.G.A. 43-39A-2(7). The same professional rules that govern my written report govern what I say on the stand.

What Georgia Law Requires

Georgia's Civil Practice Act has a specific rule for discovery from experts, in O.C.G.A. 9-11-26(b)(4). It separates experts who are expected to testify from experts who are only consulted.

A testifying expert. Once a party has identified me as an expert it expects to call at trial, the other side can take my deposition like any other witness. Subparagraph (A)(ii) then says the party obtaining that discovery must pay me a reasonable fee for the time spent responding to it. The expert or any party can ask the court to decide whether the fee is reasonable.

A consulting expert. If counsel retains me only to consult and does not expect to call me, subparagraph (B) lets the other side discover my opinions only in narrow circumstances, such as a showing of exceptional circumstances. If that happens, subparagraph (C)(i) says that, unless manifest injustice would result, the court shall require the side seeking discovery to pay me a reasonable fee for the time spent responding.

Sharing the retaining side's cost. Subparagraph (C)(ii) goes one step further. For a testifying expert, the court may require the side taking discovery to pay the other party a fair portion of what that party reasonably spent obtaining the expert's facts and opinions. For a consulting expert, the court shall require it. Whether to ask for that is a question for your attorney.

In federal court, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(4)(E) has the same basic structure: unless manifest injustice would result, the court must require the party seeking discovery to pay the expert a reasonable fee for time spent responding.

What the statute covers is discovery. It says nothing about my time at trial, and it leaves "reasonable" to the court. That is why my engagement terms, below, say who pays for everything else.

Who My Client Is, and Why Paying Does Not Change It

An appraisal has a client, and it has named intended users. Nobody else. The opposing party is not one of them, and neither is the opposing attorney. That is settled on the engagement letter before I start, and it does not move afterward.

The Civil Practice Act makes the side taking my deposition pay for the time I spend responding to that discovery. That is a discovery cost rule and nothing more. Paying for deposition time does not make that side my client, does not create a duty to them, and does not give them the right to rely on my report. They are paying for access to a witness, not buying an appraisal.

Trial testimony is not discovery, so no statute reaches it. It falls where the engagement puts it, which is on my client.

The same principle runs in the other direction. When a third party funds the fee, a family member, a business entity, or counsel billing it through, the engagement still names who the client is, and the duty still runs to the client and the named intended users only.

It is worth stating plainly, because it is also the independence answer. Who signs the check never reaches the conclusion.

How I Bill Litigation Work

These are my engagement terms, not requirements of law. They are set out in writing before I start.

The engagement fee. A non-refundable engagement fee, with a not-to-exceed cap, is due before any work begins. It is also due before I can be named as a testifying or non-testifying expert. I do not let my name go on a witness list for a file I have not been engaged on.

Non-testimony work. One hourly rate covers everything that is not testimony: the analysis, the report, deposition preparation, and travel on any day that is not a testimony day, such as the inspection trip, a document production, or a second visit to the property.

Testimony. A separate testimony rate applies at deposition or trial. It carries a three-hour minimum, and after that it is billed in half-hour increments. It runs while I am waiting to be called, on a break, or at a meal, because that time belongs to the case either way. On a deposition or trial day, the default is door to door at the testimony rate. A day given to a case is a day, whether it is spent testifying or waiting to testify.

Travel is settled in the engagement. Those are the defaults rather than a fixed rule, because travel turns on where things actually occur: whose office the deposition is taken in, which courthouse, how far. Counsel and I set the treatment in writing in the engagement, before any work starts.

Who pays which part. The deposing side pays for my testimony time at its deposition, consistent with 9-11-26(b)(4)(A)(ii). My client covers deposition preparation, trial testimony, and anything the other side does not pay, including any part a court finds is not the other side's to pay.

Invoicing. Litigation files are invoiced weekly, so no one is surprised by a large bill at the end of a case.

Keeping the appraisal and the testimony on separate terms is deliberate. Nothing about what I am paid depends on how the case comes out.

Does the Losing Side Pay My Fee?

Not as a general rule. O.C.G.A. 13-6-11 says the expenses of litigation generally are not allowed as damages, and then carves out exceptions: where a plaintiff has specially pleaded for them and the defendant has acted in bad faith, been stubbornly litigious, or caused unnecessary trouble and expense. Other statutes cover other situations.

Whether any part of your expert costs can be shifted to the other side is a legal question about your particular case. Your attorney can answer it. Plan on my client being responsible for my fees under our agreement, apart from the deposition time the statute assigns to the deposing party.

What the Court Looks At

Any witness with a reasoned basis can testify to value in Georgia. Under O.C.G.A. 24-7-701(b), a witness does not need to be an expert or a dealer to give an opinion of a property's value if he or she has had an opportunity to form a reasoned opinion. That can include the property's owner.

An expert's opinion has to clear a higher bar. O.C.G.A. 24-7-702(b) allows it only if the expert's specialized knowledge will help the trier of fact, the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data, it is the product of reliable principles and methods, and the expert has reliably applied those methods to the facts of the case. On a party's motion, the court may hold a pretrial hearing on whether the testimony meets that standard.

Clearing that bar gets an opinion in front of the judge or jury. Whether it persuades them is a separate question, and that is where appraisals are won and lost. It is almost never the number that fails. It is the support behind the number.

How to Tell Two Appraisers Apart

Retaining an expert is not a commodity purchase, and the difference between one appraiser and another does not show on a quote sheet. Two things separate them.

The first is the deliverable. A form with boxes checked states a conclusion. A narrative report shows its reasoning, sale by sale and adjustment by adjustment, so the reader who comes next, opposing counsel, an opposing expert, or the court, can follow the path to the number rather than be asked to accept it. Only the second kind is built for cross-examination.

The second, and it is the larger part by a wide margin, is who built it. That is invisible from a price, so ask, and ask the same of anyone the other side names. Has this appraiser done your specific type of assignment, and how many? Have they been deposed or testified, and how often? Will they personally perform the inspection? What will the effective date of value be, and why? Does the fee depend in any way on the outcome, which should draw an immediate no. And for a contested file, one more: have they sat on the review side, deciding whether another appraiser's work was defensible?

Ask me all of it, then verify what I tell you. I have been in the field since 1997 and licensed as an appraiser since 2000, and I have sat in nearly every seat that ever reads an appraisal. Field work. The review chair. Chief Review Appraiser at Act Appraisal and at eValuation ZONE, both national appraisal management companies, where I was the final technical authority on disputed values and on the complex, high-risk, and unusual property nobody else wanted to sign off on. I built and ran a wholesale appraisal desk at 1,700 orders a year, ran appraisal management operations, performed FHA field audits, and have been engaged as an expert in litigation. Georgia classifications are searchable through the Georgia Real Estate Commission and Appraisers Board, and every certified appraiser in the country appears on the ASC National Registry, which is free and public. Look me up. Look up whoever the other side retains.

There is one more thing, and it is the reason clients say the report reads the way it does. At the inspection I talk with the owner rather than taking photographs and leaving. What they tell me about the property, and what I can ask them on the spot, is evidence the file would not otherwise have.

What Drives the Cost of Expert Work

• New appraisal or review. A review of the opposing report is a different assignment from a new appraisal, and sometimes the more useful one.
• Number of properties and effective dates. Each property, and each past date the value is needed as of, is its own analysis.
• The size of the file. Opposing reports, prior appraisals, and deposition transcripts all have to be read.
• Depositions. Whether one is taken, how long it runs, and where.
• Court time. The number of days, the distance to the courthouse, and how long the wait is before I am called.
• The calendar. A straightforward current-value report is delivered 24 to 48 hours after the inspection. Estate, retrospective and as-repaired work, and any complex assignment such as acreage, divorce, litigation or thin comparable data, runs 7 to 14 business days. I state the timeline when I quote the assignment.

Records and Discovery

Georgia requires me to keep each report and its supporting data for five years from delivery. If I am told within that period that the appraisal is involved in litigation, the five years start over from the final disposition of the case. I assume the workfile will be read by the other side, and I build it that way from the first day of the assignment rather than after a subpoena arrives.

If you are counsel on a contested matter, my litigation support page explains how I take on review, rebuttal, and testimony, and the page for attorneys covers engagement.

FAQs: Appraiser Expert Witness Fees

Is testimony included in the appraisal fee?

No. Deposition and trial testimony are billed at a separate testimony rate, with a three-hour minimum and half-hour increments after that. Everything else, including deposition preparation, is billed at one hourly rate.

How is travel billed?

It depends on the day. On a deposition or trial day, the default is door to door at the testimony rate, because the day belongs to the case whether it is spent testifying or waiting. Travel on any other day, such as the inspection trip or a document production, is at the hourly rate. The treatment is set in the engagement before any work starts, since it turns on which office, which courthouse, and how far.

If the other side takes my appraiser's deposition, who pays for it?

In a Georgia civil case, the party that takes discovery from the other side's testifying expert must pay the expert a reasonable fee for the time spent responding, under O.C.G.A. 9-11-26(b)(4)(A)(ii). If there is a dispute about what is reasonable, the court decides it. Under my terms, my client covers preparation and anything the other side does not pay.

Does paying for the deposition make that side your client?

No. The client and the named intended users are fixed in the engagement letter. A party that pays for deposition time is paying for access to a witness under a discovery cost rule. It acquires no duty from me and no right to rely on my report.

When do you need to be engaged?

Before any work begins, and before I am named as an expert on either a testifying or a consulting basis. The engagement fee is due at that point.

Can I hire an appraiser only to review the other side's appraisal?

Yes. Appraisal review is its own assignment. It tells you whether the opposing report was properly developed and supported. It will not simply produce a number you prefer, and occasionally the honest answer is that the other report holds up.

Can an appraiser's fee depend on winning?

No. Under O.C.G.A. 43-39A-18(11), accepting an assignment where the fee depends on the value reached or on the consequences of the appraisal is grounds for discipline in Georgia.

About the Author

Scott D.W. Wiley is a Georgia Certified Residential Real Property Appraiser, CR432840, and is FHA approved. He was formerly licensed in six other states: Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, and Ohio, all now inactive. He has been in the business since 1997 and licensed as an appraiser since 2000, coming up through the Midwest as a field appraiser and then as a review appraiser, and serving as Chief Review Appraiser at Act Appraisal and at eValuation ZONE, both national appraisal management companies, where he was the final technical authority on disputed values and on complex, high-risk, and unusual property. He also built and ran a wholesale appraisal desk at 1,700 orders a year, ran appraisal management operations, performed FHA field audits, and works as an expert in litigation. Today he runs Go2Appraiser, serving metro Atlanta and Northwest Georgia with estate, divorce, bankruptcy, tax appeal, pre-listing, land, and investment property valuations. He inspects every property personally and writes his reports the way he spent his career demanding other appraisers write theirs.