Cases - Midland Bank Trust Co Ltd v Hett Stubbs & Kemp
Record details
- Name
- Midland Bank Trust Co Ltd v Hett Stubbs & Kemp
- Date
- [1978]
- Citation
- 3 WLR 167, ChD
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Expert witness
- Summary
-
The judge called into question the value of the evidence offered by solicitor expert witnesses in this case, a professional negligence action brought against a firm of solicitors for failing to protect a client's property interest by timely registration:
'I must say that I doubt the value, or even the admissibility, of this sort of evidence, which seems to be becoming customary in cases of this type. The extent of the legal duty in any given situation must, I think, be a question of law for the court. Clearly if there is some practice in a particular profession, some accepted standard of conduct which is laid down by a professional institute or sanctioned by common usage, evidence of that can and ought to be received. But evidence which really amounts to no more than an expression of opinion by a particular practitioner of what he thinks that he would have done had he been placed, hypothetically and without the benefit of hindsight, in the position of the defendants, is of little assistance to the court; whilst evidence of the witnesses' view of what, as a matter of law, the solicitor's duty was in the particular circumstances of the case is, I should have thought, inadmissible, for that is the very question which it is the court's function to decide.'
Note: the 'very question which it is the court's function to decide' is sometimes described as the 'ultimate issue'. See Crosfield (Joseph) and Sons v Techno-Chemical Laboratories, which also adopts a hard line on the 'ultimate issue'; but also see Barings plc v Coopers & Lybrand [2001] EWCA Civ 1163, which illustrates a modern modification of this position.