Property Disputes: Professional Negligence

What is Professional Negligence in Property?

Professional negligence arises when a professional fails provide services to the requisite professional standard causing financial or other loss to their client. 

Anyone with an interest in land, whether they be a landowner, property developer, investor or a leaseholder, will invariably retain the services of any number of professionals during the course of their property dealings to advise on and provide specific services such as valuations and conveyancing. 

Examples of professional negligence might include:

• Surveyors who provide inaccurate valuations or failed to identify structural issues.
• Solicitors who make critical drafting or other errors in the conveyancing process, in a transaction, in litigation, or where they fail to identify and advise their clients on foreseeable risks.
• Accountants and financial advisers whose advice leads to detrimental tax or investment outcomes for their property clients.

How We Can Help

We have specialist experience of pursuing and defending professional negligence claims in the context of property transactions. We aim to resolve all claims in the most cost effective, timely and commercially sensitive manner possible. Our solicitors are adept at using negotiation and other forms of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) to achieve settlement in the majority of cases, with litigation being a last resort for the handful of cases that cannot be resolved in this way. Where litigation is necessary, we will conduct the proceedings professionally and with an eye to keeping costs proportionate to the value of the claim, endeavouring to minimise the stress that comes with being in the court process.