The Trend for Single Joint Experts Not Favoured by Leading Judge

The current pressure upon litigants to appoint single joint experts is not shared by one of the country’s leading Judges. Trevor Coward, Head of our Dispute Resolution team, found the following comments by His Honour Mr Justice Peter Smith are very informative.

On 16 February an application in the midst of litigation involving a substantial development of a supermarket, shops, and flats the parties came before the Judge, as one party wanted a single joint expert to decide accounting issues, whereas the other, our clients, felt that separate experts were far more appropriate in this case.

Mr Justice Peter Smith said as follows:

“My experience is that it almost invariably gives problems when you have a single joint expert because the loser then applies to change the directions to get his own expert and I have never seen a case in all my time where the single joint expert works and I disagree with this encouragement of single joint experts. If he does decide against your client will your client lie down? No. You will apply for further directions!”

Later in the hearing the Judge asked if any single joint expert had been agreed and he was told this had been discussed and if it could not be agreed they would ask the President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. The Judge said that asking the President was a disaster as they have a panel which is not the best in the world and then both sides are stuck with it.

He said “It is best if both sides have experts and they have a meeting to agree all issues and there would be no expert issues at trial and that is what I would expect to happen. If you criticise the single joint expert it becomes adversarial and he loses his objectivity and sends his own report.”

He repeated that he had never seen a single joint expert work properly, it is only appropriate if there is a problem as to funding which is not here.

As Mr Justice Peter Smith is now the senior Judge in the Chancery Division this is an important case and we suggest that parties should not be steamrollered into agreeing single joint experts if they feel they have good reasons for separate experts.

For any further information on this matter please contact Trevor Coward.