Case No. CR-2019-LDS-000669

227.I had the benefit of an expert report from Mr Greg Lacey of FAR Consulting dated 7 April 2022 on behalf of Lisa, together with an Addendum to that report dated 25 April 2022 and his answers to various questions put to him by the Relevant Respondents. Some of his evidence was excluded by an earlier order by me, permission for such expert evidence not having been sought or given.228. Mr Lacey gave oral evidence before me. I deal with his evidence later in this judgment. At this stage I should simply say that I regarded his evidence as balanced and reliable.229.However, I have to comment on the scope of Mr Lacey’s expert report.230.As regards the scope of the expert report of Mr Lacey, the position was wholly unsatisfactory. The initial directions agreed between the parties purported to allow the experts to agree between them the scope of their reports and the issues that they would cover. However, ultimately the expert issues can only be determined from the pleadings. It is not for the experts to agree what the legal issues are nor which issues require expert evidence to address them. Further, the solicitors for the Petitioner seemed to regard the permission to call expert evidence as a carte blanche permission to ask him any questions that they wanted to, going beyond even the scope of the somewhat badly defined issues that he was permitted to opine upon. The result was that at an earlier hearing, before the trial, I struck out various sections of the expert report as clearly not having the permission of the court and it being too late to obtain such permission.231.Further, there was a wholly unclear agreed direction that the expert evidence would be permitted to deal with:“ iii) verifying the transactions and accountancy treatment of the transactions which form the subject of this dispute.” This omnibus description is wholly unclear. A further and later court order, again by consent, repeated the direction that was previously made regarding “verifying transactions and accountancy treatment of transactions”. The result was that Mr Lacey (admittedly on instructions) appears to have investigated almost any transaction mentioned anywhere in the pleadings whether or not there was a legal issue about them or not. As such, rather than dealing with issues put to him Mr Lacey’s role in large part turned into one of investigation as to whether or not there might be issues.232.Although the court ultimately controls expert evidence, when presented with a draft consent order, as in this case, a Judge will often have inadequate time in which to consider the issues separately him or herself so as to determine whether the consent order is appropriate. In this, as with agreed extensions of time, the lawyers need to consider carefully whether to advise their client to consent to orders and not simply to take the easy course. 233.A considerable section of the report dealt with matters that I found on an earlier occasion the court had granted no permission for (and on that basis I had struck out the relevant sections of the expert report).234.Furthermore, a lot of Mr Lacey’s evidence was not expert evidence but simply evidence of fact as to what documents were or were not available to him and what those available to him showed. 235.I should make clear that I do not blame Mr Lacey. He did what he was asked to do. However, I do consider that the way in which the obtaining of expert evidence was approached, sought to be used and permission obtained from the court was all unfortunate and the cause of a lot of unnecessary cost. 236.The Respondents failed to comply with relevant court directions and accordingly there was no expert evidence on their behalf.