Construction professionals who appear in court as expert witnesses will no longer have immunity from prosecution, after a landmark Supreme Court judgment.
A judicial panel of seven of the UK’s top judges ruled expert witnesses should lose their 400-year-old protection in a ruling yesterday. The ruling means expert witnesses are no longer immune from claims arising from their testimony and related work.
The historic decision follows a complaint by motorcyclist Paul Wynne Jones who was injured after he was hit by a car in Liverpool in March 2001.
Jones issued proceedings for negligence against two expert witnesses in his civil case for compensation, after their damaging testimony resulted in much-reduced damages.
His case was struck out by the High Court, but was referred up to the Supreme Court as a matter of general public importance. Lawyers warned the ruling may result in increased insurance premiums for professionals.
Rupert Choat, partner at CMS Cameron McKenna, said: “Specialist firms and individuals who practise as expert witnesses may see an increase in their insurance premiums, but it should be limited.”
Okay, so what does this now mean for those professionals who may get called to give some "expert" advice into a court? ~ of course, surely the simple answer to this rhetorical question is that as long as you are competent and able to provide clear evidence of the knowledge and understanding of the subject matter you are asked to report upon, and you only report within the level of your competence and experience without adopting any bias ~ then, you probably have nothing to fear!
The CDM Regulations have an interesting process that is often overlooked for a number of reasons; - this is the "reverse burden of proof" and is important when the commissioning CDM Client has to make appropriate statutory appointments of the Designer(s), CDM Coordinator, Contractor(s), and the Principal Contractor.
The criteria for "Competence" to comply with the CDM Regulations is set out in Appendix 4 AND Appendix 5 of the Approved Code of Practice [ACoP] to the CDM Regulations ... how many commissioning Clients actually understand the ACoP when appointing (say) the CDM Coordinator? Do they simply see that the person or firm is registered with one of the listed "professional registers" and do no more? Do they really know how easy it is to get onto some of those registers listed in the ACoP?
The CDM2007.org online E-Learning Portal provides the means: ~ duty holders now have the unique ability to register their criteria and give proper and robust third-party validated evidence of their means to meet the criteria using the Competence Registry ... this unique facility will enable such professionals to print off a clear testimony of their whole criteria ~ but they still need to ensure there is no bias or untrue reporting made to the court that an aggrieved person or organisation could take action under this latest judgement! ...
Ed.
