Cases - Austen v Oxford City Council

Record details

Name

Austen v Oxford City Council

Date

[2002]

Citation

(unreported), QBD

Keywords

Expert witness

Summary

In a personal injury action, an order for an SJE to give psychiatric evidence was made by the district judge. The claimant's solicitors agreed to the defendants' proposal of their own expert as SJE. When a highly unfavourable report was delivered the claimant's solicitors accepted it and proceeded with the claim, believing the report would only be given limited weight, a view which the judge described as 'bizarre'. The judge then refused the SJE to be cross-examined. The claimant appealed.

The court referred to Daniels v Walker as authority for the proposition that a party dissatisfied with the report of an SJE can ask the court for permission to instruct and call another expert; and to Peet v Mid Kent Healthcare NHS to the effect that if an SJE is called to give oral evidence, both parties should have the opportunity to cross-examine the SJE. In this situation:

'How far the cross-examination would have been permitted would have been for the trial judge who had a discretion to allow it in the first place ... The cross-examination would have been likely to be sufficient to persuade the Judge to resile from the black and white view he had obviously formed ... His decision deprived the claimant of that limited opportunity.'