A comprehensive guide to the law, practice and procedure relating to the admission of expert evidence in courts, tribunals, official enquiries and other proceedings, including arbitration. It gives detailed guidance to those involved in the pre-trial preparation of expert evidence or the presentation or questioning of it in court.
- Covers expert evidence in both civil and criminal proceedings
- Sets out general principles and deals with the application of those principles in specific contexts
- Covers courts, tribunals, official enquiries and arbitration
- Provides guidance for pre-trial preparation of expert evidence, including such issues as bias, privilege and confidentiality
- Discusses when expert evidence can be used
- Details methods of questioning expert evidence in court
- Looks at the form and content of expert evidence, including that produced by machines, devices and other apparatus
- Considers methods of proof, dealing with psychological and psychiatric evidence; land and building valuation; forensic sciences and techniques; actuarial, accountancy and market research; evidence with a mathematical element; and proof of foreign law
- Deals individually with different fields of litigation: personal injury cases; construction claims; intellectual property; criminal sentencing; drink/driving offences; obscenity; and matrimonial and other proceedings involving children
- Includes all important statutory provisions and rules, and extracts from relevant cases
- Makes comparative reference to various other common law jurisdictions, including Scotland, Canada, USA, Australia, NZ and Ireland
- Covers new developments including:
- The Post Office Horizon scandal where experts engaged by the Post Office continued to maintain that the accounting software used in branch Post Offices was reliable when it was not.
- The Canadian experience of dealing with expert reports which transpire to have not been substantially written by the expert named in the report (‘ghost reports’).
- The use of AI to assist in the writing of expert reports.
- The suggestion from two judges in Ontario (Ferguson and Nordheimer JJ) that discussions between lawyers and experts in the course of litigation should not be the subject of privilege which led to a wide-ranging discussion in that state as to the role lawyers should play in the production of expert evidence.
- The approach of the courts in England and Wales to legal teams attempts to influence the outcome of a joint statement of the experts.
- The new Criminal Procedure Rules 2025 as they apply to experts.
- The importance of sending questions to the other side’s experts in (typically low value) cases where the expert is unlikely to give ‘live’ evidence at trial and where his or her evidence will be writing only following Griffiths v TUI (UK) Ltd [2023] UKSC 48.
- The holding in British Airways v John Prosser [2019] EWCA Civ 547 at [28]-[29], following a suggestion in the 4th edition, that the general rule should be that a solicitor, rather than the client, is obliged to pay the fees of an expert in the absence of any contractual term to the contrary. (Early authority in Wakefield v Duckworth & Co [1915] 1 KB 218 had suggested the opposite).
- The robust exclusion of junk science on the efficacy and dangers of the Covid-19 vaccines in cases concerning the welfare of children.
- The family court’s robust approach to psychologists who are not regulated or not chartered psychologists.
