- Ruling: Court of Cassation, civil chamber, no. 61 of 27 February 1981
- Facts: appraisal ordered by the court to assess a loss — the expert made his findings without summoning the defendant party at least 5 days in advance
- First instance and appeal: report approved and judgment rendered on that basis
- Ground of cassation: breach of the adversarial principle and of the statutory notice period for summoning to an appraisal
- Cassation: quashed. The adversarial process at the appraisal is a public-policy guarantee; its breach voids the report, even if the party would have been present
- Scope: any appraisal report (medical, technical, property, accounting) produced without a proper prior summons of the parties is challengeable and must be set aside by the trial judge
- 2026 application: the rule now appears in article 63 of the Code of Civil Procedure and remains fully in force
1. Why this five-day deadline exists
The five clear days are not a lawmaker's whim. They serve a very precise purpose: to let each party organise its technical defence against an expert whose conclusions alone can tip the outcome of the case. Five days is the minimum time to book travel, instruct counsel, appoint an advisory expert, gather the useful documents, or even ask the judge to disqualify the expert if his impartiality seems doubtful.
The rule was affirmed as early as 1981 under the former code, and carried over in full by the current wording of article 63 of the Code of Civil Procedure: “The expert summons the parties at least five days before the date fixed for the operations, by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt or by any other means leaving a written trace.”
2. The key passage of the ruling
“Whereas it follows from the rules of civil procedure that the expert may only carry out his operations after summoning the parties within the legal deadline; whereas, by relying on an appraisal report carried out without a proper prior summons, the Court of Appeal disregarded the adversarial principle and breached the provisions governing court appraisals; its decision is liable to be quashed.”
Three words to remember: summons, prior, proper. The ruling does not require the party to have actually attended the operations — it requires that the party was put in a position to attend. The nuance changes everything: an expert who shows up with one party present and the other properly summoned but absent works validly; an expert who shows up with one party present and the other not summoned works in a vacuum.
3. Direct application to property appraisal
The 1981 ruling concerned a medical appraisal, but its scope is general: the Moroccan Court of Cassation has transposed it without difficulty to all court appraisals. In property matters, this translates concretely into the following obligations for the appointed expert:
- Summon all the parties by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt at least 5 clear days before the site visit — which means posting the letter 8 to 10 days ahead to account for postal delays.
- Attach the summons to the report together with the acknowledgements of receipt, failing which the absent party can plead a lack of proof.
- State in the summons the date, time, exact address and purpose of the visit — an imprecise summons is equivalent to no summons.
- Also summon the parties' counsel if their names were communicated by the registry — omitting them does not automatically void the report but can weaken it.
- If a party fails to appear despite a proper summons, the expert proceeds with the operations and records this expressly in the minutes — a properly recorded absence does not paralyse the appraisal.
4. The classic trap: the “informal” visit
The scenario practice observes most often — and which leads straight to nullity — is the preliminary “to get a feel” visit before the real adversarial one. The expert goes alone to the property at a party's informal request, takes notes, photographs, then organises after the factan official visit to “formalise” things. The final report reproduces in substance the findings of the first visit — without the opposing party ever having been able to contest them.
The Court of Cassation considers that this practice empties the summons of all meaning: what matters is not the date of the official visit but the date of the decisive material operations. If the determining measurements, photographs or calculations were taken without a summons, the report is challengeable, even if a formal visit later took place. The practical rule for a property expert is simple: no technical operation before the first adversarial visit, apart from reading the case file at the registry.
5. And for non-resident owners (MRE) abroad?
The five-day deadline is a minimum, not a maximum. When one of the parties lives abroad, the reasonable expert extends this deadline to 21 or 30 days to allow for the delivery time of international registered mail, obtaining a legalised power of attorney at the consulate, and the practical organisation of local representation. A summons sent with five days' notice to a non-resident heir living in Paris, Brussels or Montreal will almost always be treated as irregular in practice, for lack of usable time.
Advice: if you are a non-resident and the recipient of a summons to an appraisal in Morocco, reply in writing within 48 hours to confirm a date that suits you or to request a postponement — your unexplained absence does not suspend the proceedings, but a written, reasoned request for postponement creates for the expert a duty to respond, and weakens a report produced without taking it into account.
Five clear days before the material operations, by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, to all the parties. Not sooner, not otherwise. Any report produced without this prior summons is legally challengeable and can be set aside by the trial judge — even years later, before the Court of Cassation. A serious expert systematically attaches the summonses and acknowledgements of receipt to the final report.
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