Committal of an Expert Witness for Contempt of Court: Liverpool Victoria Insurance Co. Ltd v Zafar [2019] EWCA Civ 392
| Author | Tony Ward,Adam Jackson |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022018319849778 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
Case Note
Committal of an Expert
Witness for Contempt
of Court
Liverpool Victoria Insurance Co. Ltd v Zafar [2019] EWCA Civ 392
Keywords
Contempt of court, sentencing, expert evidence, statement of truth, perverting the course of
justice
Liverpool Victoria Insurance appealed against the sentence imposed on Dr Zafar for contempt of court
arising from a report he provided in an action for whiplash injury in a car crash. Dr Zafar was a GP who
provided expert evidence in around 5,000 civil cases a year. In each case, he took about 15 minutes to
examine the patient and write his report. The complaint of contempt of court arose from a case where
having initially reported that the claimant had fully recovered from the minor injury sustained in a car
accident, he amended his report at the request of the claimant’s solicitor, without any further examina-
tion of the claimant. His revised report bore the date of his examination of the claimant but gave a much
more pessimistic prognosis, for which there was no basis in his notes of the original medical examina-
tion. In this respect, the report reflected what Dr Zafar was told by the claimant’s solicitor but gave no
indication of the source of the information. It included the following declarations:
Wherever I have no personal knowledge, I have indicated the source of factual information. I have not
included anything in this report, which has been suggested to me by anyone, including the lawyers instructing
me, withoutforming myown independentviewof the matter ...
I confirm that I have made clear which facts and matters referred to in this report are within my own
knowledge and which are not. Those that are within my own knowledge I confirm to be true. The opinions
I have expressed represent my true and complete professional opinions on the matters to which they refer.
The alteration of the report came to light because a paralegal mistakenly sent the original report to the
appellant’s lawyers.
Garnham J found the complaint of a civil contempt of court proved, and committed Dr Zafar to prison
for six months, suspended for two years: Liverpool Victoria Insurance Co Ltd v Khan and others [2018]
EWHC 2581 (QB). The insurance company appealed on the ground that the penalty (not strictly
speaking a ‘sentence’, although the Court of Appeal does use the term) was unduly lenient.
Held, allowing the appeal, the deliberate or reckless making of a false statement in a document
verified by a statement of truth would usually be so inherently serious that nothing other than an order for
committal to prison would be sufficient. That was so whether the contemnor was a dishonest claimant, a
lay witness, or an expert witness putting forward an opinion without an honest belief in its truth. A false
statement made by an expert for financial reward would be even more serious, but even where the expert
did not stand to gain financially a false statement was a serious contempt of court because of the reliance
placed on expert witnesses by the court and the importance of the expert’s overriding duty to the court.
Without seeking to lay down an inflexible rule, an expert witness who recklessly made a false statement
The Journal of Criminal Law
2019, Vol. 83(3) 186–190
ªThe Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0022018319849778
journals.sagepub.com/home/clj
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