Case Updates

The Claimant brought a claim in negligence against the Defendant, a dental practitioner, about the Defendant’s alleged failure to provide her with adequate advice about the risks and benefits of the treatment options available to her. The Claimant’s expert lacked understanding of the Bolam test, had not considered the dental notes, and was forced to make significant concessions in the joint report.

The Claimant alleged that the Defendant was in breach of the agreement between the parties for the supply of single alpha chain collagen. The judge was critical of the Claimant’s expert witnesses, in particular noting that he would have had to direct further accounting expert evidence be produced, if the evidence had been required.

This month on the Expert Matters Podcast, we take a look at the EWI Annual Conference which was held on 19 June. The Conference got off to a great start with a keynote speech on AI & the Expert Witness by Sir Geoffrey Vos, the Master of the Rolls, and carried on with great speakers and panels. Join us on a trip down memory lane as we relive our key highlights from the event. 

Shaun Hesmondhalgh has been an Expert Witness since 2016, specialising in cases involving dog welfare, dangerous dog behaviour, and dog-related human fatalities. He tells us about how he became an Expert Witness, the importance of industry experience over academic qualifications, and why his expertise is more in demand than ever.

This was a fact finding hearing into the death of a young child. The Judge found that the neurologist expert witness failed to discharge his duties as an expert witness to the family court.

Although the detail of this judgment is for diabetologists and gastroenterologists it is of general interest with regard to its treatment of statistical evidence, reliance on odds ratios and relative risk ratios and the position taken by the court on the relationship between the civil standard of proof and confidence intervals.

Alexander v HCA International Ltd [2026] EWHC 1284 (KB) 

The claimant sought damages amounting to the difference between the £16.9 million contract sale price from a failed house sale and the sum ultimately obtained for the property of £10.1 million, less that £2.5 million forfeited deposit. After finding the expert evidence compromised by the information provided to the experts, the judge set out a better approach to expert evidence in property valuation.

At a recent Frontier Economics Litigation event, the President of the Competition Appeal Tribunal, The Honourable Mrs Justice Bacon, warned that advocate economists, or economists who ignore obvious analytical points adverse to their client, were not helpful to the Tribunal and self-defeating for the expert.

“If an Expert, a lawyer, an accountant, an engineer, a doctor produce inaccurate or unreliable opinions or use hallucinatory references, they are likely to be liable in negligence, whether they’ve used AI or not.” Sir Geoffrey Vos KG, Master of the Rolls

The Claimant suffered serious injuries in a road traffic accident after the Defendant, who was driving out of a side road, collided with the Claimant’s motorbike. Despite being aware of surveillance evidence before preparing his last report, the Claimant’s orthopaedic expert did not reveal his true opinions on the Claimant’s malingering until cross-examination.

Grant Greening-Steer v Derek Ainge [2026] EWHC 1239 (KB)