Court-appointed experts

I refer to the letter by Peter Fenech regarding court appointed experts (September 29). To be quite honest I was quite surprised at the reasoning of my colleague.

Dr Fenech stated that when I argued, in a previous article, that it is of the utmost importance for experts to be totally independent, it led him to conclude that I inferred that those lawyers not presently appointed as court experts are not loyal to the oath they have taken. Rubbish. There is absolutely no logic in such an assertion whatsoever. What does the independence of court-appointed experts who, after all, do not have to be lawyers, have to do with the oath of a legal practitioner? Absolutely nothing.

Amazingly my colleague also seems to be in favour of the notion of limiting the power of our courts to select whom they feel they ought as court experts. My colleague seems to prefer to leave the choice to the government, or better, to Nationalist government ministers. I don't blame him. As I have reiterated time and time again, it is no big secret that the only lawyers who seem to be benefiting from this present administration are those with Nationalist Party inclinations and connections. It has been shown how nearly all government consultancies and contracts are always handed to a selected few members of the legal profession.

Dr Fenech also suggested that there are persistent rumours that the courts are themselves selecting a small minority of lawyers as court experts, thereby prejudicing and discriminating against others. Furthermore, he asked me to make the necessary parliamentary questions to verify such rumours.

I assure my colleague that I have already acquired all the necessary data that show precisely the contrary to what he is insinuating. Our courts select experts from an extremely wide spectrum of people, unlike certain government ministers who always fall back in nominating the same few for preferential treatment.

I can also assure my colleague that I have gone further than that and I have asked the government to furnish me with the details of the lawyers who have been appointed consultants to the government and its agencies and who are the lawyers who are appointed on the government boards or as chairmen or given certain lucrative appointments in which their competence is questionable.

If Dr Fenech wants me to start publishing such information that I have gathered he can feel free to ask, though I cannot exclude that he himself and the firm he works for feature among the most prominent in this list.