Have you completed the Gazette’s pioneering joint survey with Bond Solon of how solicitors work with expert witnesses? We have certainly chosen an opportune moment to conduct the research. The quality of expert witness evidence and the circumstances of its deployment are under unprecedented scrutiny across multiple sectors.
Just this week, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors issued a practice alert raising concerns over the quality of expert evidence in housing disrepair cases. The alert reminds members of their legal, professional and regulatory duties when acting as an expert witness in disrepair cases and on other high-volume cases after ‘a number of reported concerns’.
Intruding on private grief, one might say. In February, a High Court judge slammed the current RICS president Justin Sullivan over his role as an expert witness in Patarkatsishvili and another v Woodward-Fisher [2025] EWHC 265 (Ch), a high-profile dispute involving moth infestation at a £32.5m London mansion.
The judge was ‘unimpressed’ with Sullivan’s ‘flawed’ grasp of matters and his exercise of judgement. Sullivan stepped down as president temporarily and referred himself to the RICS’ Standards and Regulation Board.
RICS singles out several types of concerning behaviour. They include claims of solicitors acting in high-volume cases trying to instruct the same expert in a large number of claims – creating a conflict of interest for the expert.
Of rather greater import, of course, are the alarms sounded about expert evidence in the Lucy Letby case. In February, a panel of eminent doctors declared that there was no medical evidence that Letby murdered or attempted to murder 14 premature babies. Their press conference was described by our columnist Joshua Rozenberg as one of the most momentous he had ever attended. Was Letby wrongly convicted because of unreliable expert evidence?
I could go on – and at length. Also breathtaking was the evidence given to the Post Office Inquiry by Gareth Jenkins, architect of the IT system at the heart of the Horizon scandal. Jenkins was the expert witness relied upon by the organisation to defend it during trials of blameless postmasters.
Is the quality of expert evidence a looming scandal in itself?
Please take the Gazette/Bond Solon survey. What solicitors have to say on this is important, and becoming more so.
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