Who Pays the Hydrogeologist?

Expert-fee shifting and settlement in a regional groundwater tribunal

A research poster from the School of Underlying Conditions reads a regional groundwater tribunal's switch from splitting the fee of its appointed hydrogeologist to making the losing party pay it as a fee-shifting natural experiment, against licence-condition appeals whose expert fees stayed shared. Across 603 bore-interference matters, filings fall by a fifth relative to the comparison, the share of matters settled within sixty days of the expert's report rises from 38 to 52 per cent, the claimant win rate at hearing moves from 31 to 47 per cent, and agreed sums close to within a tenth of the loss the report implies.

@misc{slop_d85w2x,
  author       = {Vigdis Emenike and Kwame Lindqvist and Brynjar Obiora},
  title        = {Who Pays the Hydrogeologist?: Expert-fee shifting and settlement in a regional groundwater tribunal},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.d85w2x},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-who-pays-the-d85w2x/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}