Cases - R v Secretary of State for Transport ex parte Factortame
Record details
- Name
- R v Secretary of State for Transport ex parte Factortame
- Date
- [2002]
- Citation
- EWCA Civ 932
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Expert witness
- Summary
-
'It is always desirable that an expert should have no actual or apparent interest in the outcome of the proceedings in which he gives evidence, but such disinterest is not automatically a precondition to the admissibility of his evidence. Where an expert has an interest of one kind or another in the outcome of the case, this fact should be made known to the court as soon as possible. The question of whether the proposed expert should be permitted to give evidence should then be determined in the course of case management. In considering that question the Judge will have to weigh the alternative choices open if the expert's evidence is excluded, having regard to the overriding objective of the Civil Procedure Rules.'
The above case should be regarded as generally more authoritative than Liverpool Roman Catholic Archdiocese Trust v Goldberg, which was criticised by the Court of Appeal on this point.