An Expert Witness is a highly qualified professional with knowledge or experience of a particular field or discipline beyond that to be expected of a layman or the ordinarily competent professional. The Expert Witness's duty is to assist the Court or tribunal with an impartial opinion on the particular aspects of the matters that are within his expertise and in dispute between the Parties.

The Experts duty is always to the Court irrespective of the clients’ objectives, generally an expert is instructed to represent one of the parties or if agreed between the parties and/or ordered by the Court can accept a joint instruction as a single joint expert ‘SJE’.

Before accepting an appointment, the expert must be able to demonstrate that there is no conflict of interest with any of the parties, and indeed if there is any concern must disclose this to all the parties.

The Expert will be required to produce a CPR Part 35 compliant report setting out their statement of truth to the contents of the report.

Dr Antino has considerable experience as an Expert Witness. However, Dr Antino considers that his most successful cases are those that do not proceed to Court because the parties are able to resolve the dispute following receipt of his CPR report and without incurring considerable litigation costs.

Litigation is not for the faint-hearted, it is extremely stressful, costly and time-consuming, therefore engaging an Expert at an early stage of the dispute is fundamentally important to understanding the strengths and weakness of both your position and the other parties.