Case Updates

This case illustrates how the Family Court depends on expert paediatric and radiological evidence to decide when and how a child’s fracture was sustained. This summary does not include how the court used the evidence. Suffice it to say that the expert evidence was only a part of the evidence before the court.  

C1 and C2 (Children: Fact Finding), Re [2024] EWFC 247 (B)

The judge preferred the evidence of the Claimant's expert because of the Defendant's expert’s approach to his task as expert, his confusion over the proper approach to what prior art was and was not in the common general knowledge, the number of assertions he made which he was forced to resile from as incorrect, and his failure to acknowledge a key fact.

The judge found that the forensic accounting expert’s approach of forming an opinion as to the value of the Company, then carrying out a detailed calculation and only if it matches his initial opinion accepting it, undermined the credibility and reliability of his opinion as to the value of the Company.

The Claimant alleged that the Defendant acted negligently in obtaining her consent for laser eye surgery including failing to adequately investigate her ophthalmic condition prior to the surgery.

The judge found that the evidence of the claimants' psychological expert fell well below the standard to be expected of a competent expert witness, both as to form and as to substance.

Rashpal Samrai & Ors v Rajinder Kalia [2024] EWHC 3143 (KB)

In this Bermudan case, the appellant successfully appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to have his convictions quashed because of errors in the collection, examination and interpretation of the DNA expert evidence used in the trial.

Julian Washington (Appellant) v The King (Respondent) (Bermuda) [2024] UKPC 34

This was one case brought to trial in the multi-claimant non-freezing cold injury (NFCI) litigation. The case illustrates the challenges for experts when the clinical condition in issue is rarely encountered (or at least rarely recognised) in normal NHS practice. The detail of this judgment may be of interest only to neurologists and vascular surgeons but makes useful reading for any expert instructed in a case where non-freezing cold injury is in issue. 

Fraser v Ministry of Defence [2024] EWHC 2977 (KB)

This case concerns an important boundary matter that sometimes arises for orthopaedic experts in relation to biomechanics and ergonomics. These are areas of expertise for which the orthopaedic surgeon’s ‘working knowledge’ may be sufficient, thereby avoiding the time and expense of instructing a further expert just as in cases where knowledge and experience of orthopaedics in general is sufficient and it is not necessary to instruct an orthopaedic sub-specialist.

Swierzko v Mathiesons Bakery Ltd [2024] SC EDIN 43

The judge noted that the expert readily accepted that integral to his reasoning was that he did not believe the claimant as to the symptoms he had suffered and, probably, teh claimant's account of the incident. In the judge's view, it is entirely outside the remit of an expert to decide which witnesses of fact he believes or disbelieves.

Allard v Govia Thameslink Railway Ltd [2024] EWHC 2227 (KB) 

The judge in this patent case found that the claimants’ gene therapy expert had developed, quite possibly guided by lawyers, the understanding that the primary duty of an expert witness is not to say anything that may damage the instructing party’s case if it can be avoided.