EXPERTS AND THE COURTS: DEVELOPMENTS IN 2024: “WHOSE EXPERT EVIDENCE IS GOING TO BE ACCEPTED AT TRIAL?”: SOME INTERESTING WEBINARS IN THE NEAR FUTURE

Issues relating to expert evidence have formed a large part of the material considered in this blog so far this year.  The webinar on the 11th December reviews the key cases and their significance for practitioners and experts alike.  Webinars next year consider those factors which leads the courts to prefer the evidence of one expert over another.  This is considered in the context of personal injury litigation and then, separately, in relation to clinical negligence and issues relating to liability and causation. Finally a webinar in March aims to help practitioners head off problems with experts and avoid evidential and procedural problems arising.

“I am afraid that I am driven to the conclusion that his evidence was verging on the dishonest and was, certainly, unprofessional, and unacceptable from a court-appointed expert witness. I do not understand his motives, but he was not applying his first duty to assist the Court.”

WEBINAR – EXPERTS IN THE COURTS IN 2024 11th DECEMBER 2024

“[the expert”] said and wrote quite a lot which was not justified on the evidence, or which was directly contradicted by the evidence, or by which he trespassed outside his area of expertise and/or into my judicial functions, or which amounted to argument and advocacy, and he did so because, in my judgment, he had lost sight of the fact that his first duty was to the Court, and was actively seeking to influence the Court to make a lower award”

On the 11th December 2024  there is a webinar reviewing the key cases and comments on expert evidence throughout the year (this is another hour long webinar that could easily be extended to last a whole day).

Matters to be considered include:

• Experts reporting outside their expertise
• Experts in fundamental dishonesty cases
• Compliance with the rules
• Conduct and alleged misconduct.

Booking details are available here.

Whose expert evidence is going to be accepted at trial? (Personal injury): webinar 7th February 2025

This webinar takes a close look at those cases where the courts have preferred one expert witness over another in personal injury litigation. It considers the factors that the court takes into account and the lessons that litigators can draw.

The disciplines considered include:

• Engineering evidence
• Reconstruction experts
• Care experts
• Medical experts

Booking details are available here.

Whose expert evidence is going to be accepted at trial? (Clinical negligence): 14th February 2025

“I found this to be a bewildering answer. It suggested that medical textbooks deliberately provided doctors with false information about the range of CD4 in the healthy population in order to encourage them to give inaccurate advice to HIV patients that they were making progress. In order to make good such a dramatic assertion one would have expected to see some form of substantiation in evidence…   Unsurprisingly there was none.”

Expert evidence is crucial to clinical negligence cases, both in terms of establishing liability and causation. The result  of the action will, in most cases, depend on which experts’ evidence is accepted at trial.

This webinar takes a close look at the way in which the courts consider expert evidence at trial in clinical negligence actions and the reasons that expert evidence is not accepted. Issues considered.

• Red flags. When the expert does not comply with the CPR 35 requirements
• “Not an expert at all”
• An expert with no expertise in the area they were reporting in
• “Red flags” for expert evidence
• “Closely run” cases – what tips the balance?

Booking details are available here. 

Avoiding problems with expert witnesses: 6th March 2025

There have been a large number of cases  on the conduct of some experts and those instructing them this year, many of them will be looked at in the webinar. The aim of the webinar is to ensure that lawyers understand the law and principles relating to expert evidence, can use expert evidence properly and effectively and can take steps where their own (or their opponent’s) experts go “off the rails”.

“On the basis of that signature the expert stated, “with a level of scientific certainty” that Mr Packham was the author of the letter.  The expert’s primary difficulty, however, was that the sample signature he was relying on was not Mr Packhams.  The document had been signed by the company accountant.”

• The rules relating to expert evidence
• “Who is an “expert
• Obtaining the Court’s permission to rely on expert evidence
• The admissibility of expert evidence
• The lawyer’s role & interactions with the expert
• “Experts behaving badly” how to spot this and what to do.

Booking details are available here.