EXCLUSION CLAUSES IN NEGLIGENT VALUATIONS

Abstract

" There is no professionalism in using mystique and jargon to defend incompetence" ¹ Attempts to limit or exclude liabilities extensively are not what one would require of a competent professional in offering her services. As with the other professionals, valuers have succumbed to business complexities in this time and age by attempting to exclude their liabilities with the 'magical' escape route of exclusion clauses. However, the speed at which business is conducted and the dramatic increase in the liability of valuers over the past two decades² necessitates such exclusions of liability. This dissertation strives to establish greater certainty, given the absence of local case authorities and the conflicting views of the English courts, for the local professional valuer in her reliance on exclusion clauses in the event of negligence ¹Ross,M in "Negligence in Surveying and Building": The Continuing of Liability, p237. ²This trend is due to two main factors stated by Khublall, N in "Professional Liability relating to Defective Premises"[Journal of Real Estate and Construction, 1991,2,41-58], being:- (1) the development of the law is such that a professional person has the responsibility not only to his contractual client but also to a third person where there is a sufficiently close relationship; and (2) the difficulty of employing a clause excluding liability by reason of statutory intervention.