Expert Witness Features – page 23

Just who can be an expert witness?

IN THE good old days it was easy to find a forensic accountant for your client.

The senior partner of the client’s accountants would fit the bill well. He probably knew the judge, knew the client (or at least knew of the client) and had gravitas.

Often, in the brave new world, you do not even get a free choice, what with protocols and Single Joint Experts. Just to make matters worse, case law, professional standards and judicial guidance seem to be pulling in different ways.

The role of materials testing in forensic science and civil claims

MATERIALS TESTING does not necessarily involve a specific test to an ISO:BS: EN standard – and there are many such standards.

It involves a number of stages before specific standard tests are carried out, if indeed necessary. These stages involve the following steps

Investigators with forensic accreditation

FOR OVER 30 YEARS, expert evidence on fires, explosions, carbon monoxide poisoning and thermal wounding has been supplied to solicitors and their clients by the Forensic Science Service’s (FSS) London Fire Investigation Unit (FIU).

The team is called upon to investigate over 300 fires a year UK-wide, ranging from simple domestic fires to major arson, and its expertise has been used to investigate some of the most serious and high-profile fires, including those at King’s Cross station, the Momart art warehouse and, most recently, the Cutty Sark.

Lethality and the law

EVERY TIME a firearms expert witness stands in the box in court and starts to give evidence, the old definition of a firearm gets trotted out: “a lethal barrelled weapon capable of discharging a…” (Section 57, Firearms Act 1968). And then the argument starts.

Whether or not a thing is a weapon is fairly easily distinguished, and certainly the presence or otherwise of a barrel should be easy enough to prove. However, the word ‘lethal’ is prone to a huge amount of usually misguided argument.

Pitching your style of testimony can make a difference

THE ROLE required of a noise consultant as expert witness cannot easily be defined. Different styles of expert testimony seem to be required in different forms of tribunal. Pitching this just right appears to be at least as important as the technical content of the evidence itself.

For example, in a recent noise abatement notice appeal heard by a district judge, there were several days of very detailed debate over the academic minutiae of noise measurement and analysis technique. On both sides noise consultants appeared convinced that the witness who was better able to defend the rigour of their methods would prevail.