Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Ramsdale v Ditta [2026] EWHC 544 (KB): withdrawing admissions under revised CPR 14, delay, replacement expert not shopping, and disclosure of first report (England and Wales)

Published on: 31 March 2026

Published by a LexisNexis PI & Clinical Negligence expert

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Article summary

Ramsdale v Ditta and others [2026] EWHC 544 (KB)

What are the practical implications of this case?

Applications to retract admissions fall within CPR 14, which underwent a major overhaul and streamlining in October 2023. Both the CPR and case law place marked emphasis on admissions because they dispose, for the purposes of the proceedings, of the points they cover, cutting expense and enabling the parties to concentrate on the matters that remain live; accordingly, the bar for granting permission is, and ought to be, relatively elevated. The courts have time and again condemned so-called expert shopping, where a party turns to a second expert in the same speciality merely because they dislike the first expert’s opinion. In this dispute, the defendant resorted to a second nursing expert only because the first withdrew from all further medico-legal work. The court did not characterise that as expert shopping, but it did register some unease about how widely the second expert was instructed, bearing in mind the admissions that had already been made earlier in the litigation...

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