Cases - Sansom v Metcalfe Hambleton & Co

Record details

Name

Sansom v Metcalfe Hambleton & Co

Date

[1998]

Citation

2 EGLR 103, CA

Keywords

Expert witness

Summary

The defendants carried out a building survey of a house built for the claimant. The house was constructed on steeply sloping ground, with a high retaining wall at the front boundary of the site. The defendants were sued for negligence in failing to draw the client's attention to a crack in this wall which, it subsequently turned out, had been defectively constructed and required expensive remedial work.

A defendant chartered surveyor had been found negligent in failing to draw attention to a crack in a building. The Court of Appeal held that this finding could not be supported by reference to the evidence of a structural engineer:

'... a court should be slow to find a professionally qualified man guilty of a breach of his duty of skill and care towards a client (or third party) without evidence from those within the same profession as to the standard expected on the facts of the case and the failure of the professionally qualified man to measure up to that standard. It is not an absolute rule ... but, unless it is an obvious case, in the absence of the relevant expert evidence the claim will not be proved'.