The Court was asked as to the extent to which a valuer can permissibly rely upon matters drawn from his own knowledge and experience, and which are not proven by direct evidence on the one hand, as compared to specific transactions upon which he relies for the formation of an opinion as to value, on the other hand, and which must be proven.
Held: Where an expert relies upon the existence of some fact in support of an opinion, that fact must be proved by admissible evidence. Megarry J said: ‘I know of no special rule giving expert valuation witnesses the right to give hearsay evidence of facts.’
As to ‘non-specific hearsay’ he said: ‘As an expert witness, the valuer is entitled to express his opinion about matters within his field of competence. In building up his opinions about values, he will no doubt have learnt much from transactions in which he has himself been engaged, and of which he could give first-hand evidence. But he will also have learned much from many other sources, including much of which he could give no first-hand evidence. Text books, journals, reports of options and other dealings, and information obtained from his professional brethren and others, some related to particular transactions and some more general and indefinite, will all have contributed their share. Doubtless much, or most, of this will be accurate, though some will not; and even what is accurate so far as it goes may be incomplete, in that nothing may have been said of some special element which affects values. Nevertheless, the opinion that the expert expresses is none the worse because it is in part derived from the matters of which he could give no direct evidence. Even if some of the extraneous information which he acquires in this way is inaccurate or incomplete, the errors and omissions will often tend to cancel each other out; and the valuer, after all, is an expert in this field, so that the less reliable the knowledge that he has about the details of some reported transaction, the more his experience will tell him that he should be ready to make some discount from the weight that he gives it in contributing to his overall sense of values. Some aberrant transactions may stand so far out of line that he will give them little or no weight. No question of giving hearsay evidence arises in such cases; the witness states his opinion from his general experience.’
Judges:
Megarry J
Citations:
[1973] 1 Ch 415, [1973] 1 All ER 726, [1973] 2 WLR 435
Statutes:
Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 24A
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Landlord and Tenant, Evidence, Litigation Practice
Updated: 14 May 2022; Ref: scu.656664
