75 LAWYER MONTHLY EXPERT WITNESS AWARDS 2025 My work has recently branched out into a number and variety of Medical Negligence and Family Court Cases (15), where the depth and clarity of the forensic entire-case analysis approach is appreciated, and now even demanded, as it allows the toxicological evidence to be correlated closely with the circumstantial, and conclusive answers being able to be provided, underpinned by the peer reviewed scientific literature. Further very rare and unusual useful casework evidence input, not uncommonly, can also arise (perhaps not unsurprisingly) from one’s: long life experience (especially military training), unusual life experiences, and also exposure to many unusual and varied case experiences (currently over 425 in my case). Thus, a recent murder case involving suspected strangulation, and where an underground publication (“Black Medicine”) encountered during military combat training, provided useful input to the medical doctors trained in ethical medical procedures; and where such considerations of extreme vulnerability of critical areas of the human body to the slightest insult, might not have been expected to have been part of the usual medical training curriculum! A further case involved experience of the use a wide range of different hire cars and observation of the unusual sensitivity (at the time) of their collision braking activation mechanisms to objects on the pavement (confirmed by a cattle grid on North Hill Minehead having to be urgently redesigned). This being in a case where a high-powered car, driven at unusual high speed on a straight road (possibly due to a spiked drink cocaine induced seizure), suddenly cartwheeled multiple times and landed upside down on a stone wall. (The case analysis and scene walkthrough, showing a rail maintenance van legally parked, but where the road angled on approach, to the offside just at the parking location) (and also diesel seepage from the overhead main rail bridge and a special high friction road pad to counter this). Interestingly, in this regard, at an experts’ conference with the Porton Down expert on Ricin (in R v Kauser, 2011) (and where a very detailed chemical analysis of a recipe, for the chemical processing production of ricin, was shown by myself to have been unable to produce product, in correct opposition to the prosecution opinion), they wondered as to why, in a previous ricin case (and where it was declared that there was no suitable expert in the UK) I had not been instructed. (With experience of six cases including the Wood Green Ricin Factory, and a case in the Four Courts of a wealthy wife who procured a hit man from Las Vegas USA to assassinate her husband, using extracted ricin imported within a contact lens holder)! Further interesting cases, (on a lighter note), involved instruction by HMRC in regard of the exact nature of a natural product for tax assessment purposes, a huge consignment of Viagra containing mixed isomers, (the firm likely running out of the required chemical and adding a close isomer to make up the batch), and an entertainment establishment selling Nebuchadnezzars of champagne for £55,000, (absence of funds being discovered during the weekly shop)! Another achievement was the pioneering of the application of the Watson Total Body Water method to blood alcohol calculations, recently vindicated by a publication by AW Jones, following which the recommended accredited method was changed. “Some of the very best results have been obtained under the highest pressures, at the extreme of intellectual effort.” OPEN ACCESS THERMAL IMAGE, BY DRONE, OF THE HIGHORDER EXPLOSION, JUST AFTER THE ATTEMPTED MAKE SAFE PROCEDURE HAD BEEN APPLIED TO THE WWII UNEXPLODED AERIAL BLAST BOMB
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