Module 8 · Reporting, Ethics and Practice

8.5 Expert Evidence and Disputes

9 min read

Damp cases become disputes more often than most survey work, and a proportion of practitioners will at some point find their report in one — either as the surveyor whose work is being examined, or as an expert instructed to give an opinion. Both are different from ordinary practice in ways that catch people out, and the differences are mostly about duty and about what actually gets challenged.

Learning objectives

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

State an expert's overriding duty and how it changes the work.
Write an opinion that can be defended under challenge.
Handle the pressure that arrives from an instructing party.
Prepare for having your own earlier report examined.

Key terms

Overriding duty: An expert's duty to the court or tribunal, which takes precedence over any obligation to the instructing party — including the party paying.
Range of opinion: Where a range of reasonable professional opinion exists, an expert must state it and explain their position within it, not present one view as the only one.
Single joint expert: One expert instructed by both parties. Duty and independence work identically; the practical difference is that both parties see everything.
Cross-examination: Testing of the evidence. In practice it targets method, scope and internal inconsistency far more often than technical knowledge.

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