Negligence

It was established law that the process of valuing real property had strong subjective elements. It was an art not a science, and not every error of judgment amounted to negligence. There was a “bracket”; a “permissible margin of error”. It was a necessary pre-condition to liability that the final valuation figure was shown to be wrong, ie “outside the bracket”.

Where the court was considering whether a valuation was in itself negligent, the claimant normally had to show not only that the valuer fell in some way below the standards to be expected of a reasonably competent professional, but also that the valuation fell outside the range within which a reasonably competent valuer could have valued the asset. Where the valuation was made up of a number of different aspects, a different methodology might have to be adopted in relation to different aspects because of the nature of the particular valuation process with which the court