PI Brief Update

"All Experts Are Equal…": A Twelve Step Programme for Good Experts - Will Waldron QC, Exchange Chambers

16/11/15. In a recent article looking at the role and duties of experts, and the ways in which some have fallen foul of them, I quoted from Janet Smith LJ in the case of Uren when she said: “When an expert witness makes a bad point, it damages his authority and his opinion on other potentially better points is undermined”.

It is about as concise a statement of the truth of ill judged expert evidence as you could find. Drawing upon a nautical analogy, a ship once sufficiently holed below the waterline will keep taking on water until it sinks. An expert damaged in similar fashion will scupper your case, probably with all hands lost! I dare say we all have examples to give of the moment in evidence that the heart began to race a little faster, often as the judicial eyebrow was raised in disapproval, when we heard our expert try to defend the indefensible or justify the unjustifiable.

One glaring example springs to my mind. It occurred at a time when I could still rightly claim the bright eyed ground of youth during an examination in chief (remember them?!) of a medical expert. I had spent a happy hour with him in conference before the hearing, during which time I had confirmed his opinion and, more to the point, understood just why he regarded his opposite number as a nincompoop. Thus armed, I rose to my feet confidently to get down to business only to find myself having one of those “Would Your Honour give me a moment?” moments. I turned to my instructing solicitor, gasping for air and as pale as the wig on my head, to enquire whether I had suffered an auditory hallucination. The expert had just...

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