In 1952, the justice system intervened because the Bernese violin maker and dealer Henry Werro was accused of unfair business practices. Werro was remanded to custody for a fortnight; business documents and a total of 19 instruments were confiscated.
In 1958, the final round of a highly publicised trial was held before a jury in a court of the canton of Bern. Henry Werro was accused of 23 counts of fraud, forgery of documents and coercion in one case. The fraud charges essentially involved selling instruments with false declarations above their actual values. In many cases, however, Werro sold the instruments with appraisals by internationally renowned experts. The case made big waves. It had kept the investigating authorities and the court busy for six years.
In addition to the allegedly injured parties, the defence called the best-known, internationally recognised experts, such as Albert Phillip Hill (London) or Emil Herrmann (New York) to testify. The trial thus became a showdown of expert witnesses.
The judiciary found itself in a dilemma. It needed to have the validity of the old instruments determined by unbiased and competent experts. However, some of the experts in question also happened to be the business partners of the defendant. Thus, other experts were called in by the court. Among them were renowned Swiss violin dealers of the time, as well as the forensic scientist of the Zurich City Police, Dr Max Frei-Sulzer. Their expertise, in turn, was not recognised by the defence.
Dr Max Frei-Sulzer had been working on scientific analysis using florescence under UV light on the surfaces of vintage violins.
Some of the expert opinions presented at the trial, as well as the supposedly scientific findings of the luminescence analysis by Dr Frei-Sulzer, proved to be unhelpful and to some extent incorrect.
According to the trial records, the court endeavoured, in an elaborate procedure, to evaluate the different and contradictory expert opinions appropriately.
Henry Werro was ultimately found guilty of two counts of fraud and 12 counts of falsification of documents and sentenced to a suspended sentence of one year.