Insights into expert practice in different jurisdictions can be very helpful, not least because they often show that there are good and bad experts everywhere.  DHV v Motor Insurers’ Bureau was an unusual case about the compensation due to a pedestrian injured by an insured driver in Spain. Various quirks of the law and the claim meant that it was heard in the UK but the judge needed to apply the Spanish Baremo  system (ready-reckoner in English) to assess the size of the claim.

This meant that the judge had to consider the evidence of 8 Spanish experts specifically accident reconstruction, Spanish law, actuarial and medico-legal experts. The results can only be described as mixed bag.

At the top end of the scale the judge praised the Defendant’s actuarial expert as “knowledgeable and also very fair-minded” reaching some conclusions that favoured the Claimant. The Defendant’s accident reconstruction expert was also careful and measured in his evidence, “always at pains to alert the court to the limits of his evidence and expertise and when challenged over a gap in the evidence accepted that he should have covered the specific issue.   Similarly their expert in Spanish law was “aware of his limitations and balanced”.