Cases - Whitehouse v Jordan

Record details

Name

Whitehouse v Jordan

Date

[1981]

Citation

1 AII ER 267, HL

Keywords

Expert witness

Summary

In this medical negligence case, several of the judges expressed concern about the way in which the plaintiff's expert evidence was organised, suggesting a high degree of involvement by members of the legal team. As Lord Wilberforce put it:

'While some degree of consultation between experts and legal advisers is entirely proper, it is necessary that expert evidence presented to the court should be and should be seen to be, the independent product of the expert, uninfluenced as to form or content by the exigencies of litigation. To the extent that it is not, the evidence is likely to be not only incorrect but self defeating.'

(The Whitehouse finding was adopted as the first point in The Ikarian Reefer.)