For forty years Stefan has worked as an expert witness successfully assisting clients, their lawyers and insurers under Civil and Criminal Procedure Rules guidelines in the fields of botany, horticulture (commercial and domestic), mycology, algology, plant pathology and garden design/ landscaping.
A typical case might be to assist in elucidating the cause of a multi-thousand pound commercial crop loss but the many others have ranged widely from successfully resolving a dispute for a high profile client who was being grossly over-charged for a garden design running into many thousands of pounds to being able to demonstrate the cause and apportion responsibility for serious needle drop in valuable consignments of imported Danish Christmas trees. Among numerous other cases have been personal accident claims where plants were involved as well as some criminal actions.
This was the comment from an insurance company client to instructing solicitors following a recent successful and highly complex claim running into several million pounds – ‘That’s fantastic. It’s a great result for us and reflects on a great team with you, our QC and our experts, not least Professor Buczacki who really went the extra mile…’
And some recent comments from instructing solicitors:
‘Many thanks for all your immensely helpful work throughout this case and in particular over the last week when we were really up against it…’
‘This was a really taxing case and I would like to thank you for your invaluable input…’
And this from defence Counsel in a recent criminal trial after giving my evidence in Court:
‘If we’re convicted, it certainly won’t be for any lack of help from you…I wouldn’t hesitate to use you again’.