NLJ this week: Experts need to know their limits

Writing in this week’s NLJ, David Locke and Giles Colin highlight the message the courts are sending that experts must only accept instructions on matters within their specialist areas of expertise.

Locke, partner at Hill Dickinson, and Colin, barrister at 1 Crown Office Row, review the court decisions and the warnings they convey to expert witnesses and those who instruct them. They note that ‘all clinical negligence practitioners will be readily able to provide anecdotal examples of experts pushing the limits of acceptability. The most typical examples will be of long-since retired experts continuing to provide opinions in relation to events occurring since their time in clinical practice ended’.