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PI Brief Update

The Difference Between Winning and Losing - Bill Braithwaite QC, Head of Exchange Chambers

21/11/14. One of the topics I blog about most is the selection and use of experts in catastrophic injury litigation. The reason is that it is one of the most important topics; good experts help us to win cases, bad ones damage or lose them.

I had a classic example recently. An expert I know well, and have done for a long time. This expert has a good background in brain injury, and I have seen reports prepared by the expert over many years. On this particular occasion, the reports prepared by the expert were all over the place – shambolic in fact – with typos and serious calculation errors. Worst of all, the expert had paid scant attention to the present position, which was important, and had failed to make any reasonable prediction as to the future, which was even more important.

As my solicitor and I agreed, it was as bad as it could be. It’s too late to change the expert, so we will have to go into negotiations knowing that we have a fundamentally weak link.

Bill Braithwaite QC
Head of Exchange Chambers
This article was first published at http://billbraithwaite.com/blog/

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The opinions expressed in the articles are the authors' own, not those of Law Brief Publishing Ltd, and are not necessarily commensurate with general legal or medico-legal expert consensus of opinion and/or literature. Any medical content is not exhaustive but at a level for the non-medical reader to understand. 

Professional advice should always be obtained before applying any information to particular circumstances.

Excerpts from judgments and statutes are Crown copyright. Any Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of OPSI and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland under the Open Government Licence.