Expert Witness

No matter which, it is the decision of the presiding Justice who will decide whether a witness is allowed to give expert opinion.

In the United Kingdom Expert Witnesses may be called upon to state their opinion on a matter within their special knowledge of skill, where the court itself cannot form an opinion from the facts.

In essence it is the ‘Expert’ Witness who presents often highly technical matters to a court in terminology they can understand.

Why is an 'Expert' different?
Generally speaking an ordinary witness providing testimony in a Court of Law can only give evidence of fact. For example: what they saw, what they heard, what they smelt, facts collected by one of the five senses. They are not permitted to speculate or to give an opinion as to the circumstances leading up to the event they have witnessed, nor what may have happened afterwards.

Experts can fall into two categories:

• The specialist as Expert Witness of fact. Where a witness can state as a fact, from his own knowledge and examination of a particular item, that a certain sequence of events always occurs and that this sequence was followed in a particular instance
• The specialist as Expert Witness who gives evidence of opinion. Where a witness can, from his own knowledge and experience, give an opinion as to why a certain sequence of events did or did not occur

"I saw the car speeding round the corner where the driver lost control and crashed into the wall" contains the opinion that the car was speeding and that the driver lost control.

Similarly
"I found this file in MS Word format on this computer disk" is fact.

"The file I found on this disk was created by MS Word" is opinion.

Vogon’s Expert Witnesses
Vogon’s Investigators have extensive court experience coupled with in-depth knowledge of disks, tapes, operating systems and software packages. In short if you have a particular area requiring an expert opinion then Vogon has a consultant with the appropriate expertise.