subject: Professional Negligence Claims In Building And Construction Disputes [print this page] Professional Negligence Claims In Building And Construction Disputes
Often we will have to employ the services of a professional in everyday life. The term professional covers anyone that offers a service which you would expect to be of a certain standard, for example a solicitor, architect, engineer or doctor. Some people have been unlucky enough to have encountered a professional who made a mistake in the service that they provided and as a result of this, they suffered a loss of some kind or damage to their business. It is important that you know when you will be eligible to make a professional negligence claim.
A professional only has to act with reasonable care or skill. If you employ an architect, they do not by law have to be a good architect, they must just act reasonably for how you would expect an architect to act. If you want to make a claim against a professional the first thing to consider is, did they act in a way which any other professional in their field would act? If you deem that they acted unreasonably then you may have the grounds to make a claim. An example of this would be if an architect failed to order materials in time and as a result of this you suffered a financial loss.
In order to make a successful claim you need to be able to prove that the professional's lack of reasonable care was what caused you to suffer a loss. Many professionals will try to argue that their clients would have gone ahead with what they had given advice on anyway and thus it can be quite hard to prove that a loss was experienced solely as a result of the poor advice.
It is very important that you are able to provide evidence to back up your claim and prove that you experienced a loss, which can sometimes be difficult to prove. An example of this would be if your accountant told you that you needed to pay a lower amount of tax than you actually needed to. As a result of this, you had to use money that you had put aside for other purposes to pay off your extra tax and you will have incurred penalties and interest as a result of your underpayment. The question will be whether the money that you had put aside for other purposes would have given you extra income or would you have had to use them to prevent other losses. The losses that you can claim for must stem directly from the negligence that you encountered.
