Cases - Horbury v Craig Hall & Rutley

Record details

Name

Horbury v Craig Hall & Rutley

Date

[1991]

Citation

EGCS 81

Keywords

Negligence in valuations and surveys

Summary

In November 1980, the claimant purchased a house in reliance on a survey commissioned from the defendants. In April 1984, while some building work was taking place at the property, it was found that certain chimney breasts had been removed, leaving the flues without proper support; this had not been revealed by the defendants' survey. The claimant paid the builders £132 to rectify this defect. In July 1985, the claimant discovered that the house was seriously infested with dry rot, again unnoticed by the defendants, which cost £56,000 to eradicate. However, it was not until February 1988 that the claimant started proceedings for negligence against the surveyors. It was held that the claimant's awareness of the missing chimney breasts was serious enough to justify a reasonable person in instituting proceedings, and that it therefore operated to trigger the 3-year period.

More importantly, it was held that this 3-year period applied to any and every claim arising out of the negligent survey, not just to a claim in respect of the missing chimney breasts; this was on the ground that the claimant had a single indivisible cause of action against the surveyor arising out of the negligent report, not a series of separate claims in respect of each defect negligently overlooked. It followed that the claim in respect of the dry rot was statute-arred by April 1987.