Cases - Graigola Merthyr Co Ltd v Swansea Corporation

Record details

Name

Graigola Merthyr Co Ltd v Swansea Corporation

Date

[1928]; [1928]; [1929]

Citation

CH 31, ChD; Ch 235, CA; AC 344, HL

Legislation

Public Authorities Protection Act 1893

Keywords

Expert witness

Summary

In this case mine owners sought an injunction to prevent the local authority filling its reservoir, alleging that it would flood their adjacent mine-shafts. The court made a number of observations on the duties of expert witnesses in preparing to give evidence for complex technical disputes to avoid waste of time and money.

'Of late years cases involving expert evidence appear to have increased in number and in length. Having regard to the complexity of modern life and the widened field over which science ranges, this is perhaps inevitable, but the overloading of these cases in the preparation of them is becoming not infrequent. Long cases produce evils; they place the parties with the lesser resources at a grave disadvantage, and they delay the course of the general business of the Courts and thereby inflict serious hardship on other litigants. In every case of this kind there are generally many "irreducible and stubborn facts" upon which agreement between experts should be possible, and in my judgment the expert advisers of the parties, whether legal or scientific, are under a special duty to the Court in the preparation of such a case to limit in every possible way the contentious matters of fact to be dealt with at the hearing ... Experts on both sides paid numerous visits to the locus in quo, both underground and on the surface, but the experts never met on the spot to see whether ... they could not reach a measure of accord ...'

Further:

'... all concerned in litigation of this class must in future in the preparation of their cases more closely address their minds to restricting the area of dispute'.