Case Updates

In the circumstances of the case, including the absence of a timely challenge to lack of form, the judge gave due weight to an expert report and the answers to questions without subtraction for lack of compliance with CPR 35 and rule 3 of the Practice Directions.

The claimants mounted an attack in cross-examination on the expertise and competence of an expert in Old Age Psychiatry. 

So many of the judgments summarised in this compendium are ones in which experts are criticised and there are lessons to be learned. What this judgment makes clear is that the first instance judge was wrong to have criticised Dr Matthews ("a very experienced child psychologist"). Yes, experts sometimes get it wrong and judicial criticism is justified. But judges can also get it wrong, in this case in their criticism of an expert.  

PP v JP & Ors [2024] EWHC 1697 (Fam)

A claimant who sustained a moderately severe brain injury when she fell off a pier was found by the judge to have been been fundamentally dishonest.

The medico-legal expert in this personal injury claim was urged by the judge to seek further training after he made all of the three most common compliance errors which the EWI sees in expert reports.

Hamed v. Ministry of Justice (County Court in Cambridge – 7th June 2024)

An expert must read and engage with any judgments which form part of their instructions. 

An expert report did not address all of the questions posed in the letter of instruction, reformulated other questions, and failed to comply with FPR Part 25 in a number of important ways, while the expert witness's oral evidence failed to provide an impartial expert view. 

The cout found that a financial expert's report was inadmissible as evidence because he was not properly independent or objective, while very little weight could be attributed to the report of an employment expert because he lacked expertise in the area in which he purported to give expert evidence. 

The qualifications and experience of an expert in an extradition appeal did not demonstrate that he was an expert on the issues before the court. 

The judge found that an expert witness's anlaysis became incoherent because he failed from the outset to take into adequate account the NICE recommendations.