Case Updates

The judge noted that that the manner in which two Expert Witnesses in Chartered Surveying gave their evidence was more advocacy than opinion, with one expert’s report reading more like a skeleton argument.

This case concerns three important issues in personal injury litigation in Northern Ireland: the extent of the plaintiff’s medical records to which an expert can have access; what the expert can ask about how the injury was sustained; and whether a plaintiff can refuse to be assessed by a particular expert.   

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 judge found that it was entirely artificial to think that sharing a platform speaking at a seminar during (in the case of one expert) or before (in the case of the other) giving evidence would have any effect or impact on the evidence of two expert witnesses in urogynaecology.

In this appeal of an asylum decision, the court was unable to discern sustainable and tolerably clear reasons as to why the judge rejected the expertise of the expert witness and his expert opinion provided in his report.

This summary, and the learning points it sets out, will be of interest to any healthcare provider. It deal with psychiatrists and psychologists preparing reports where PTSD may be relevant when considering the state of mind at the time of an alleged offence, particularly an offence of violence. 

R v Mazzer [2024] EWCA Crim 557

This successful appeal against a Family Court judgment which led to the removal of two children from the care of their parents turned primarily on the fact that the judge was found to have acted as her own expert and conducted her own analysis of the medical research material making findings that were not supported by evidence. For paediatricians, radiologists, neurosurgeons and ophthalmologists this is highly recommend reading about the courts’ analysis of expert evidence relating to abusive head trauma and low level falls.    

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)

When an SJE has been appointed, but one of the parties wishes to rely on their own evidence, the court should follow the staggered approach recommended by Lord Woolf in Daniels v. Walker.

John Seneschall v Trisant Foods Limited & Ors [2024] EWHC 1380 (Ch)