Talk:Jones v Kaney
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 | A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on April 17, 2011. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that in Jones v Kaney, the UK Supreme Court overturned a line of authority going back 400 years to allow an expert witness to be sued for professional negligence? | |||||||||
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[edit]Judgment is in: [1] (blogged) [2] (press summary) [3] (judgment)
Ruled 5:2 in favour of the appellant - abolishing expert witness immunity. Basically seems as though they felt that there is no longer (or perhaps never was) any good public policy reason behind expert immunity and that any exception to the general rule that everybody is subject to contractual and tortious duties needs some pretty good reason. They also noted that its always been a subset of advocate immunity which we don't have anymore and that getting rid of advocate immunity doesn't seem to have caused much harm.
Not really sure I agree but there you go. It's gone back to the high court now for the actual negligence trial. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bob House 884 (talk • contribs) 15:12, 30 March 2011
I too have misgivings about this decision, particularly as it relates to criminal cases. It seems to me that the UK Supreme Court gave little thought to criminal cases in their wide-reaching judgment - and no thought at all to ancillary orders in criminal cases (such as orders for compensation and confiscation). A convicted defendant might well make a claim against an expert he has instructed in criminal proceedings, without disputing his conviction, if he considers that an excessive compensation or confiscation order has been made. It would not then, it seems to me, be an abuse of process (or contrary to s11 Civil Evidence Act 1968) to pursue a civil claim against the expert without overturning the conviction.
I have expanded my blog article at http://www.accountingevidence.com/blog/supreme-court-axes-expert-witness-immunity-from-negligence-actions/ to make that point explicitly. DavidwinchUK (talk) 08:05, 15 April 2011 (UTC)