Cases - Royal Brompton Hospital NHS Trust v Hammond and Others (No. 7)

Record details

Name

Royal Brompton Hospital NHS Trust v Hammond and Others (No. 7)

Date

[2001]

Citation

EWCA Civ 206

Keywords

Construction claim - time for completion - extension of time - events operating concurrently - relevant event - expert witness

Summary

This case was one of many disputes arising out of the refurbishment of the Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea, London. No. 7 was a professional negligence action brought against the defendant architects on the grounds that they had been too generous in awarding extensions of time under the contract. The Court was thus not directly concerned with the issue of whether extensions of time should or should not be granted in cases of true concurrency. However, in delivering his judgment (and approving the approach of Dyson J in Malmaison) HHJ Seymour QC made it clear that true concurrency was certainly not a frequent occurrence:

'... it is, I think, necessary to be clear what one means by events operating concurrently. It does not mean, in my judgment, a situation in which, work already being delayed, let it be supposed, because the Contractor has had difficulty in obtaining sufficient labour, an event occurs which is a relevant event and which, had the Contractor not been delayed, would have caused him to be delayed, but which in fact by reason of the existing delay, made no difference. In such a situation although there is a relevant event, "the completion of the works is [not] likely to be delayed thereby beyond the Completion Date".'

The judge also held that an architect expert witness had produced a report in which the conclusions led inevitably from the assumptions he had been instructed to make by his clients. This fatally undermined the objectivity of the evidence.

The judge also noted that the expert witness had not practised as an architect in the previous 12 years, having sold his firm 1988. Since then he had 'not practised as an architect in the ordinary sense, but rather as a consultant and professional expert witness'. The effect of this was that

'it could be said of his evidence that it was not that of someone who had experience of the practices of architects at the time relevant to the issues raised'.

Whereas in some civil law jurisdictions, experts are expected to be very senior and therefore often retired from practice, lack of current experience of an expert witness can be a potential weakness in an English trial, or other hearing, where the subject matter is professional standards prevailing at the time of the alleged negligence.