Step 6: Professional Negligence Claims
If you have been let down by a professional person such as an accountant, a surveyor or a solicitor and have suffered financial loss as a result your type of claim is known as "professional negligence".
Liability and Causation
Like personal injury, professional negligence claims are a rather specialised breed. Claims against solicitors for instance are governed by their own pre-action protocol. These claims not only give rise to difficult questions of liability (i.e. has the professional acted negligently?) but also "causation" (i.e. did the negligence lead to the loss claimed?)
Expert Evidence
Most types of professional negligence claim are likely to require some form of expert evidence. The professional needs to be judged by the standard common to his or her profession. So, the conduct of a chartered accountant would be scrutinised by another chartered accountant acting as an expert, the conduct of a surveyor would be considered by another surveyor and so on. The exception to this rule is claims against lawyers, because the Judge can be assumed to have the necessary legal expertise to assess the case - unless it involves particularly specialised issues of law.
38%
