Welsh v Carnival PLC trading as Carnival Australia (No 2)

The matter before the court involved a claim by the plaintiff, Welsh, against Carnival PLC trading as Carnival Australia. The dispute arose out of an incident occurring on a cruise ship operated by the defendant. The plaintiff sought damages for personal injury sustained during the voyage. The case was heard in the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia. The court had to determine whether the plaintiff was entitled to call oral evidence from an expert witness, who had provided a written report, on the basis that certain passages of the report were deemed inadmissible.

The central legal issue was whether the court should permit the plaintiff's expert witness to give oral evidence in court, despite the inadmissibility of some parts of their written report. The court needed to assess whether the circumstances were exceptional enough to warrant an exception to the general rule that a party should rely on the written report alone. The defendant argued that the expert's report was self-contained and that oral evidence should not be allowed to supplement or explain the written material.

The court held that the circumstances did not justify an exception to the rule that expert evidence should generally be confined to the written report. The plaintiff's expert had failed to provide an exposition of their reasoning process leading to the expression of their opinion, which was a critical aspect that could not be rectified through oral testimony. The court found that the expert's report was not rendered unusable or incomplete by the inadmissible passages, and therefore, the plaintiff was not entitled to call the expert to give oral evidence. The application to call oral evidence was dismissed.