Expert Witness Features – page 10

Pulling the wool over our eyes

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.

Did the device fail or was it dropped?

TO BE AN expert in electronics requires a knowledge of design as well as application, and when litigation looms large and experts are called upon to investigate and to provide opinion, the difference between design and application needs to be appreciated to ensure the right person is instructed and the appropriate issues are considered.

One of the most common reasons for the failure of portable appliances and products is water damage.

CO: the killer isn’t always only the gas

IT IS estimated that there are 22 million gas users within the UK and it is essential that appliances are installed and maintained correctly.

The current Gas Safety (Installation & Use) Regulations require gas engineers who work on gas to be competent.

Similar competencies are required of the solid fuel and oil industries.

When is the noise too much to bear?

NUISANCE might seem to be the natural legal territory for the acoustics expert.

The incidence of complaints continues to soar and local authorities are obliged to take intransigent cases to Magistrates’ Courts under the Environmental Pollution Act (EPA).

Assessing value: of property and evidence

Leasehold enfranchisement

One of the problems with the process of carrying out valuations for leasehold enfranchisement has been the difficulty of valuing ‘leasehold relativity’, which is the value of a dwelling held on an existing lease at any given unexpired term divided by the value of the same dwelling in possession to the freeholder, expressed as a percentage. The difficulty derives from assumptions which have to be made which create a hypothetical world in which the valuation is undertaken.