In order for the claimant to succeed, they must prove and establish that the valuer has failed to reach a non-negligent valuation. Case law demonstrates that there is a two-step test for considering whether a valuation is negligent. …show more content…
Historically, the courts have therefore generally held the permissible margin of error in the majority of cases to be 10%. However in this case, the margin of error was 5% for a two bedroomed flat and four bedroomed house, therefore classed under unique detached property(Clarke Willmott LLP, 2015). Therefore, because the valuation was over by 6.4% on the two bedroomed flat, and the valuation of the four bedroomed house was over by 3.5%, E-Surv valuated negligently, meaning they breached their duty as they did not exercise reasonable skill and …show more content…
Mr Justice Phillips continued on the matter of distortion of openings and operation of doors, accepting that Mr Mortimer had tested the first floors recording no defects that could lead to progressive problems. However, Mr Justice Phillips stated that a reasonable surveyor would have mentioned that the misalignment of the doors “was likely to prove symptomatic of the need to incur significant expenditure on structural reinforcement”. Mr Mortimer was found to be negligent as he had breached duty of care in the method in which he carried the survey to the Cross’, as Mr Justice Phillips had concluded that the Cross’ “were entitled to know that the security of the roof they were buying was no longer underpinned by the original design calculations…”. In this case negligence rose not due to the survey itself, rather in the form of the report and the extent of the advice given by Mr Mortimer to the Cross’ (hulls,