Lawyers need to be careful when selecting experts, following the ‘damaging and unfortunately amusing cross-examination at the retrial’ of an expert in the LIBOR-rigging trial, Bond Solon founder Mark Solon writes in this week’s NLJ.
Solon said experts must be ‘appropriate to the issues in dispute and have training in the basics of law and procedure as relevant to experts and their duties’.
He recounts the shenanigans of Saul Haydon Rowe, expert witness in the case, whose conduct was the sole focus of the appeal in R v Pabon [2018] EWCA Crim 420.
Rowe, who was paid £400,000 for his evidence, had not worked as a trader since 2000. As Lord Justice Gross said: ‘He had never worked as an interest rate derivatives trader, a cash desk trader or a LIBOR submitter and appeared to have no direct knowledge of the LIBOR submission process.’
However, this did not stop him giving evidence. He also sent texts and emails discussing the evidence despite being warned by the judge not to.
