Cases - R v Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering Ltd
Record details
- Name
- R v Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering Ltd
- Date
- [1999]
- Citation
- CILL 1497, Central Criminal Court
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Expert witness - Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974
- Summary
-
In prosecutions resulting from the 1994 Heathrow tunnel collapse under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the judge (who had decided The Ikarian Reefer) commented on the shortcomings of the Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) expert evidence. The principal tunnelling expert, head of tunnelling at an engineering consultancy, had never before given expert evidence in a civil or criminal trial. After 2 days, the judge directed that the prosecution should identify those passages in the principal expert's report which emanated from the HSE. It transpired that 'extensive passages' in the report had been drafted by an HSE inspector; about 81 out of 122 pages of the main report contained contributions from HSE, 'sometimes extending to the whole of the page'. The whole of 2 appendices were drafted by the HSE inspector.
On the fourth day of the trial, the prosecution informed the court that it would no longer rely on the evidence of its principal expert. The court blamed the HSE for failing to give clear instructions to its staff 'as to the correct interface between a prosecuting authority and an expert witness' and the expert's failure 'to understand the duties and responsibilities of expert witnesses in criminal cases'. Although there was sufficient other evidence to secure a conviction, the judge made 'substantially reduced orders for costs against the defendants' to reflect the amount of trouble and expense caused to them by the flawed report.