Rejecting expert evidence

In Re M (Child: Residence) (CA TLR 24 July)

It was not open to the judge to reject the uncontested evidence of three expert witnesses that the core personality of a boy’s father had been so damaged by childhood experiences as to make him unsuitable to be the three-year-old’s primary carer following the mother’s death. The judge had erred in weighing that evidence against the impression the father had made in the witness box. A judge was at liberty to depart from the experts’ opinion, even if unanimous, on issues of future placement and perhaps even on the parent–child attachment, but even so it was incumbent on him to explain his departure from the experts in relation to management, placement and welfare more fully than he had.