In a professional negligence claim against solicitors for mishandling a personal injury trial, the claimant must adduce evidence establishing the counterfactual — specifically, what an alternative expert would have said and whether that evidence could, as a real possibility, have changed the trial outcome. The dismissal of a summary dismissal application does not finally determine the legal issue raised in that application for the purposes of res judicata or issue estoppel; it determines only that the claimant has a real prospect of success on that issue. The question of whether a solicitor's retention of an expert witness is protected by advocate's immunity was left open.
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