Kathryn Rowe is an Expert Witness and Physiotherapist with over 17 years of clinical experience in neurological, spinal and orthopaedic rehabilitation. She works with adults and young people following traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, amputation and complex multi-trauma. Here she tells us about her Expert Witness work, why she still practises as a physiotherapist in the community, and what she wishes she had known when she started out.

This month on the Expert Matters Podcast, we discuss acting for litigants in person. The accessibility of tools like generative AI is making litigation more accessible to unrepresented parties and it is increasingly likely that experts will be approached by litigant in person. We provide some advice for experts approached by a litigant in person and discuss how an expert should deal with the  situation where their previously represented party becomes a litigant in person. 

The trial dealt with liability issues relating to the alleged use of prohibited defeat devices. That is, devices which reduce the effectiveness of a vehicle’s emission control system for which there is no excuse or applicable exception. The judge criticised three of the expert witnesses for not complying with their duties under Part 35, and praised others.

The Claimant brought a claim in negligence against the Defendant, a dental practitioner, about the Defendant’s alleged failure to provide her with adequate advice about the risks and benefits of the treatment options available to her. The Claimant’s expert lacked understanding of the Bolam test, had not considered the dental notes, and was forced to make significant concessions in the joint report.

Modern digital systems generate a detailed electronic footprint, including timestamps, document revisions, communications, task completion, and other system-generated metadata. These audit trails can provide an objective chronology of events that extends beyond the primary documentary record.

In Shaheen and Ahmed v Daish, the electronic audit trail demonstrated that elements of the management plan, including the chest X-ray request, were completed after the consultation had ended. While entirely consistent with routine clinical workflow, this chronology became legally significant because it supported the inference that there was no contemporaneous evidence that the patient had been informed about the investigation or how to access it.

The Claimant alleged that the Defendant was in breach of the agreement between the parties for the supply of single alpha chain collagen. The judge was critical of the Claimant’s expert witnesses, in particular noting that he would have had to direct further accounting expert evidence be produced, if the evidence had been required.

The operator of the Nord Stream pipeline was suing insurance companies for damages caused to the pipelines by explosions which rendered them inoperable. The Defendant insurance companies asserted that the claim for damage was excluded under the policies. Judge found the evidence of one of the geopolitical experts unsatisfactory because he appeared at times to be seeking to support the Claimant’s case by advancing arguments that flew in the face of common sense and the inferences to be drawn from the known facts.

In the fifth article in the Working with expert witnesses series, Richard Lodge a Partner at Stewarts, discusses his experience of working with Single Joint Experts. 

In her judgment on X and Y (Care Proceedings: Fact Finding: Death of a Child), the Judge was highly critical of the evidence and conduct during proceedings of one of the expert witnesses, a consultant neurosurgeon, Mr M. This judgment, which should be read alongside the earlier judgment, dealt with whether Mr M should be named within that published judgment.

This year’s Annual Conference discussed AI, independence, credibility, transparency and the changing expectations on expert witnesses.