Briefing: Reflections on the role of the expert witness

This paper tries to record some of the experiences of a civil and structural engineer and building surveyor over a period of some 50 years and how he became involved, by chance, in advising protagonists who had resorted to legal disputations to resolve their differences. The author is not a great supporter of disputations that rely too heavily on legal management of the arguments – and certainly not of going to court (if it can be avoided). He believes that going to court is, in principle, a failure, unless the matter is extremely complex or an issue upon which crucial legal clarification is required. Most other instances are, in his view, exercises in ‘bullying’, inefficiency, dishonesty, arrogance or stupidity. It is important to appreciate that most well-conducted dispute ‘cases’ (the vast majority) are resolved without ever getting to court, so the ‘expert’ aspect is required far more often than the ‘witness’ part. Most expert witness roles in building and engineering disputes are in civil law cases, but some do occasionally arise in criminal cases, particularly where injury or fatality is involved. For the sake of gathering all blame to the author himself, he confirms that the opinions that he expresses below are his and his alone and not those of the Institution of Civil Engineers.