Obligation-Conflict Resolution
Case 16-7 (2016) · Expert Witness—Discovery of New Data Following Submission of Report
Professional obligations conflict, and the board applies no fixed rule for which one wins.
Each resolution is recorded as three edges:
competesWith (the tension),
prevailsOver (the obligation the board allowed to win in this case), and
defeasibleUnder (the situation under which the yielding obligation gives way).
The same tension is then traced across comparable cases, where its resolution shifts with context.
Hover any obligation or state to see its definition; click to open it in OntServe.
How this case resolved it
No obligation was overridden in this case: the board resolved the apparent tension without defeat, as recorded below.
Resolved without defeat
The board resolved the apparent tension here by setting a duty's boundary (specification) or by finding no genuine conflict on the facts (dissolution), rather than by allowing one obligation to prevail over another.
specification
Analytical conclusion 3: The synthesis suggests a temporal/triggering principle: A...
Given that Engineer A had no established duty to actively re-verify the data after submitting the report, but nonetheless came to recognize the inaccuracy through incidental discovery, the board concluded that recognition alone, not a monitoring obligation, is what triggers the duty to disclose, making the disclosure duty absolute once triggered but not...
What the board concluded
- Engineer A had an affirmative obligation to step forward and immediately advise Attorney X. Since Attorney X was in the middle of negotiations with the defendant’s attorney, which may or may not have resulted in a settlement of the case, this was critically important information for Attorney X to have in his possession.