Coyne v Calabro

In the matter of Coyne v Calabro, the Federal Court of Australia was tasked with deciding whether the plaintiff was entitled to present further expert evidence. The plaintiff had engaged a single expert, who subsequently communicated with a party involved in the dispute, which should not have occurred. This communication resulted in significant differences of opinion between the single expert and an expert separately engaged by the defendants. The defendants argued that the plaintiff should be precluded from presenting further expert evidence due to the improper communication.

The court was required to determine whether the plaintiff's expert's communications with a party involved in the litigation warranted the exclusion of their evidence. The court considered the circumstances surrounding the communications, the extent to which the communications influenced the expert's opinion, and the impact of the communications on the fairness of the proceedings. The court also considered the significant differences in opinion between the single expert and the defendants' expert.

The court concluded that the communications between the plaintiff's expert and a party in the litigation were serious breaches of professional conduct that undermined the reliability of the expert's evidence. However, the court found that the plaintiff was not precluded from presenting further expert evidence if it could be shown that the evidence was necessary to ensure a fair trial. In this case, the court found that the presentation of further expert evidence was necessary to ensure a fair trial, as the significant differences in opinion between the parties' experts warranted the presentation of additional expert evidence to assist the court in reaching a just decision. The court granted the plaintiff leave to adduce further expert evidence.

The court ordered that the plaintiff be allowed to present further expert evidence in the form of a report from an additional expert, and that the defendants be allowed a reasonable time to respond to this new evidence. The court also ordered that the parties bear their own costs associated with the application to adduce further expert evidence.