TEXTILES come in many different forms: from fibres and yarns to clothing and carpets; from medical textiles such as bandages to specialist protective clothing against fire or microbiological hazards.
The textile industry is no stranger to disputes between companies or between the consumer and the retailer or service supplier and in today’s ‘blame’ culture, finding a suitably qualified expert to assist in these disputes can itself be a difficult task, let alone succeeding with the claim in court.
In years past the UK was the cradle of many textile innovations, from the spinning Jenny to new synthetic fibres.
However, as with many other industries, much of the industry has been decimated as production moved overseas.
One consequence of such a move is that many experts have left the industry or retired.
A search of online directories of expert witnesses produces only a relatively small number of textile experts and in some instances the list is further diminished by the degree of specialism of the individual expert.
Finding the right expert can be like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
And many qualified people who are experts in may decline to accept legal instructions as they are unwilling to face the risks to themselves if a successful outcome to the claim is not achieved: even the expert is not immune from the blame culture prevalent today!
Another problem can be that the cost of obtaining such an expert’s report can often be far greater than the value of the textile, especially if the expert has to travel to view the textile in situ.
The Small Claims Court limit on the amount which can be recovered by the consumer for obtaining the expert’s report (assuming that they are successful in the claim) is just £200, but an expert’s report can cost several hundreds of pounds more than that, depending on the work involved for the expert.
One of the most difficult tasks of the expert is to inform a potential client that, although they appear to have a genuine claim, it is impossible to produce sufficient evidence to support the claim and the likelihood of success in court is limited. Some retailers know that and play on the fact to their advantage, standing their ground and making unreasonable demands that the consumer ‘prove’ that the retailer is at fault, even if the costs of achieving that are grossly disproportionate to the cost of the article in question.
The reforms of the legal system to remove the adversarial nature of expert’s evidence, while generally successful in commercial disputes, has failed the consumer miserably due to the cost controls imposed and is effectively denying some consumers the justice they deserve against unscrupulous or merely obstinate suppliers.