The claimants had bought apartments in a new-build block, developed by the first defendants with other defendants acting as architectural supervisors of the works. They alleged that the building were poorly constructed. The defendant architects said that the sales had been completed long before their certificates were issued and that therefore they were not liable.
Held: The appeal was allowed: ‘the suggested independent tortious duty to take care in the inspection of the property could not in my view have generated in Strutt and Parker a duty to point out at any given time the existence of defects which would, or would if unrectified, prevent the issue of a clean Certificate. It may be that Strutt and Parker undertook contractually with Optima to adhere to a programme of inspections, but it seems to me that to posit additionally a tortious duty periodically to draw attention to defects in construction is simply too great an accretion to graft onto what is at bottom an assumption of responsibility to take care in making statements upon which persons will place reliance.’
Maurice Kay VP CA, Tomlinson, Christopher Clarke LJJ
[2014] EWCA Civ 714
Bailii
England and Wales
Construction, Professional Negligence
Updated: 18 December 2021; Ref: scu.535448
