Scullion provides some lessons in law & life for the buy-to-let market, says Alison Padfield
The High Court has recently held that a surveyor engaged to provide a valuation of a buy-to-let property for a lender owes a duty of care in tort to the purchaser. The decision, which is already subject to appeal, raises issues of significant importance to buy-to-let investors, and to surveyors and their professional indemnity insurers.
The case was Scullion v Bank of Scotland (trading as Colleys) [2010] EWHC 572 (Ch), [2010] All ER (D) 181 (Mar), [2010] EWHC 2253 (Ch). Twenty years earlier, in Smith v Eric S Bush [1990] 1 AC 831, [1989] 2 All ER 514 the House of Lords held that a surveyor engaged by a mortgage lender to value “a modest house at the lower end of the property market” owed a duty of care in tort to the purchaser. At that stage, the position in relation to very expensive houses or commercial property was expressly reserved. More recently, in Wilson v D M Hall [2004] ScotCS 268, [2005] PNLR 375, a small-scale, first-time
