Cases - Peet v Mid-Kent Healthcare NHS Trust
Record details
- Name
- Peet v Mid-Kent Healthcare NHS Trust
- Date
- [2001]; [2002]
- Citation
- EWCA Civ 1703; 3 AII ER 688, CA
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Expert witness
- Summary
-
Where the parties in a medical negligence case had instructed an SJE, it was not permissible for 1 party to meet the SJE in the absence of the other, unless with the other party’s written consent. The claimants' solicitors had requested a meeting with the SJE without the presence of the defendant health authority's solicitors, which they claimed would inhibit and traumatise the claimants.
Lord Woolf rejected this submission:
'... the idea of having an experts' conference including lawyers without there being a representative of the defendant present, as was suggested by the claimant's solicitors, in my judgment is inconsistent with the whole concept of the single expert. The framework to which I have made reference is designed to ensure an open process so that both sides know exactly what information is placed before the single expert. It would be totally inconsistent with the whole of that structure to allow one party to conduct a conference where the evidence of the experts is in effect tested in the course of discussions which take place with that expert. I emphasise that what I have just said does not prevent one expert from communicating with another expert in order to obtain any information which that expert requires to include in his or her report'.
(See Smith v Stephens on a similar point.)