It’s fairly common for experts to be criticised for having exceeded their expertise, not so common for them to be regarded as ‘too expert’. In a recent case involving the valuation of a hotel by an independent expert surveyor the Defendant’s selected an expert witness who reflected their own general expertise but the Claimant (strictly the Pursuer as this was in Scotland) chose an expert with specific and extensive knowledge of the hotel sector.
Unwisely the less experienced expert chose to critique his opposite number’s valuation but as the judge remarked “When challenged, Mr Murphy accepted that, notwithstanding what he had put in his supplementary report, he could not properly criticise Mr Chess’ methodology. Rather to my surprise, at the end of this passage of questioning when it was put to Mr Murphy that what he had done was to “whack out £1.2 million to keep the score down”, his response was “Fair point”.
The judge not surprisingly accepted the more experienced expert’s valuation, confirming that more expertise rather than less is definitely the better option. We’ll leave it you to decide which expert in that story had been too clever for their own good.