A survey by the Expert Witness Institute, supported by Fortythree Tech

Jane Duff is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Head of the National Spinal Injuries Centre Psychology Service, and an Expert Witness. Here, she tells us what she loves about her work and how her clinical and medicolegal roles come together to complement one another.

Veterinary surgeon, Jeremy Stattersfield, has been guiding courts on veterinary medicine since 1981. He told us how he got into the Expert Witness world; what motivates him; and shares his observations and advice for Experts from all professions.

The judge found that the report by the claimants’ forensic accounting expert was not expert evidence because it simply reported what the underlying documents said in a more digestible way, without adding any expert opinion. On the one or two occasions where the expert did offer an opinion, they were not opinions on any accountancy matter.

EWI Chief Executive Officer, Simon Berney-Edwards, shares his thoughts on 2025, a year where Expert Witnesses have continued to come under increasing scrutiny.

The Claimant, on her solicitor’s advice, covertly recorded her testing by the Defendant’s neuropsychological expert. Weighing up the factors in favour of admitting the evidence and against admitting it, the judge considered that they were very finely balanced and quite difficult and that he may well have ruled that the evidence could not be relied on, if the Defendant’s expert had not himself inadvertently recorded the testing.

The task for the expert in this case was enormous. Capacity is issue specific. This means that if the issue is someone’s capacity to conduct legal proceedings, in this case sixteen sets of proceedings, the expert has to consider each set of proceedings. The person may have the capacity to conduct some and not others.

Johnston v Financial Ombudsman Service [2025] EWCA Civ 551

In this article, Dr Kay Linnell OBE talks about the role of the expert witness, and the problems that can be encountered when Instructing Parties go too far to prevent any accusation of bias or undue influence on appointed party’s expert, risking the expert’s ability to fully assist the Tribunal. Dr Linnell's article was originally published in the autumn edition of Expert Matters, EWI's membership magazine.

The Competition Appeal Tribunal has published a Practice Direction on expert evidence. The Practice Direction sets out the principles applicable to expert evidence in the Tribunal, including general principles applicable to the evidence of any expert, as well as certain specific principles applicable to economic evidence. 

The Claimant defaulted on a loan secured by a mortgage on a warehouse building. It disagreed with the Receiver's approach to marketing the building and applied unsuccessfully to the Court for an order giving it conduct of the mortgagee sale. It's subsequent appeal to the Court of Appeal included appealing the Judge’s refusal of expert evidence. The Court of Appeal upheld the Judge’s decision as it was not clear how the report would provide any real assistance with resolving the question before the Judge of whether the conduct of the sale should be taken away from the Receivers.