Doctor shopping describes the attempt to obtain a more favourable opinion by moving from one expert to another after receiving an inconvenient view. It is not the same as seeking a proper second opinion or replacing an expert who lacks the correct expertise, is unavailable or has produced a defective report.
The distinction matters. A party may obtain expert evidence. It is not entitled to keep asking the question until someone gives the answer it wants.
The uncomfortable report.
The most useful expert report is not always the most welcome one. A claimant solicitor may expect a twelve-month prognosis and receive six months. A defendant may expect causation to be rejected and instead be told that the accident caused a short-term aggravation. A clinical negligence solicitor may anticipate support on breach and receive the opposite view.
Such reports may weaken settlement position, require difficult advice or expose earlier problems. That is not report failure. It is expert evidence doing its job. The danger begins when an unfavourable opinion is treated as a problem to be managed rather than evidence to be understood.
There are legitimate reasons to change experts. The expert may be outside the correct field, misunderstand the instructions, fail to address the issues, or become conflicted or unavailable. Replacement may then be proper.
Replacing an expert because their independent opinion is inconvenient is different. That is not quality control. It is outcome shopping.
Independence cannot be optional.
The expert’s duty is not to the party paying the invoice. Under Part 35 in civil proceedings in England and Wales, the overriding duty is to assist the court. That duty gives expert evidence its authority and makes doctor shopping so corrosive. If parties can quietly discard unhelpful opinions and continue searching for a favourable one, the court sees only a filtered version of the evidence. The expert becomes less a source of independent assistance and more a supplier in a litigation marketplace.
Experts are not instructed to make a case easier to run. Their opinion may help or harm the instructing party. The court needs it to be honest, reasoned and independent.
How manipulation happens.
Report manipulation is rarely announced. It appears in smaller habits: narrow instructions, omitted records, leading questions, repeated requests to “reconsider” without new evidence, or an unfavourable report being labelled incomplete. Comments on draft reports can be proper. Experts should correct factual errors, consider missing records, clarify ambiguity and revise an opinion when new evidence justifies it.
But there is a line.
An expert should not be pressured to alter an opinion because it harms the case. If an amendment concerns a factual correction, that is straightforward. If new records change the opinion, the report should explain why. If the conclusion is merely said to be “too strong” or “unhelpful”, alarm bells should ring.
The court’s concern.
Courts are alert to expert shopping. Where a party wishes to change experts, the court may examine the reason and may make permission to rely on a replacement conditional on disclosure of the earlier report. The earlier report may initially be privileged, but privilege does not give parties a free hand to manipulate the evidence presented. Expert evidence exists to assist the court, not merely the party that found the most helpful witness.
An unfavourable opinion is not improper because it is unwelcome. The expert’s task is not to be useful to the case. It is to be useful to the court.
Second opinions are not the enemy.
Medicine is complex and experts may legitimately disagree. A first report may be poor, based on misunderstood facts or written by the wrong discipline. A party may lose confidence because the reasoning is inadequate, not because the conclusion is unfavourable.
The problem is not the second opinion, it is concealment and motive.
A responsible second opinion begins with candour. Why is it needed? What was wrong with the first report? Has the first view been fairly considered? Is the replacement expert receiving the complete evidential picture, including material that undermines the desired outcome?
Experts should be wary of selective instructions and should not become complicit in sanitising the history of the evidence.
The cost of convenient opinions.
Doctor shopping may produce a short-term advantage, but the risk remains. If the earlier opinion emerges, disclosure may follow, the replacement expert may be placed in difficulty, and the litigation strategy may lose credibility. It damages trust in the medico-legal system. It encourages the suspicion that expert evidence is selected until useful. That suspicion harms good experts as much as poor ones.
What good practice looks like.
Good practice begins before instruction. Choose the correct discipline, provide the relevant records, identify the issues, ask clear questions and disclose difficult facts. Do not expect the expert to repair a weak case by ignoring them.
When the report arrives, read the reasoning before reacting to the conclusion. If it is unfavourable but well-reasoned, the client needs advice, not a replacement expert. If it is unclear, seek clarification. If records were missing, provide them. Replace the expert only where the reason is genuine and documented. Experts must also resist pressure to amend opinions without a proper basis, record material assumptions and explain when new evidence changes their view. The best protection is a clear paper trail.
The wrong kind of search.
There is nothing wrong with selecting a qualified expert carefully. The problem begins when selection becomes substitution and substitution becomes suppression.
A party may search for expertise. It should not search for obedience. A solicitor may challenge reasoning but should not pressure an expert to adopt the case theory. An expert may revise an opinion, but not because the first answer was commercially inconvenient. The medico-legal system depends on expert evidence being more than a product. The court is entitled to know whether the opinion before it is independent judgement or merely the last surviving view after inconvenient opinions were discarded.
That difference can decide a case. It can also decide whether the expert evidence deserves to be trusted at all.
