A reader asked what duty a lawyer has to check out a potential expert.
Good question.
A lawyer who uses an expert must not knowingly put forward someone who is lying. So, if I know someone is not a doctor I can't use them as an expert doctor. But I don't have a formal duty to check behind the credentials -- and until recently if someone told me they were, say, a charter accountant, I just believed them.
Today I call the regulator to determine status.
Of course, if a mental health professional used a term like "raving lunatic" (see below) I would immediately be put on notice something was odd. Either the professional was not a professional (as apparently the case here) or they qualified in the 1920s and haven't read the literature since (the Mental Treatment Act, 1930 changed the legal term from "Lunatic" to "Person of Unsound Mind").
http://bit.ly/m2TR0a
Carola Vyhnak
Urban Affairs Reporter
A judge botched a child custody decision because of a therapist who passed himself off as a psychologist, a grandfather has told a fraud trial in Oshawa.
The judge, who took custody away from the grandparents of the little girl, was "deceived" into believing Gregory Carter was a qualified psychologist, David Bulmer testified on Thursday.
"The tipping point in his decision was based on Gregory Carter, psychologist," Bulmer said, noting the judge referred to Carter as "doctor" 31 times.
In his report at the custody hearing, Carter called Bulmer a "raving lunatic," court heard.
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