Capita Alternative Fund Services (Guernsey) Ltd and another v Drivers Jonas [2011] EWHC 2336 (Comm), All ER (D) 52 (Sep) [2011]
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 was dealing.
In general, the bracket should only be
