Sued For negligence15 Oct 2009 14:14
DTZ ordered to give more information in negligence claim
Christian Metcalfe 15/10/2009 09:45
DTZ has been ordered to give more information in answer to an £8.6m negligence claim issued against it by the administrator of collapsed property finance company Lexi Holdings.
The High Court has ordered that DTZ should give further information on how it reached an allegedly negligent valuation placed on No Man’s Land Fort, a former island fortress in the Solent.
In February 2004, Sean Wordley, who resigned as a director in DTZ’s valuation team three years ago, allegedly valued the property at £14.25m in a report given to Lexi in order to provide a £7m bridging loan to a purchaser of the Grade II listed fort.
After the purchaser went bankrupt Lexi took control of the property.
Following Lexi’s collapse in October 2006, administrator KPMG recovered the property from Lexi’s former owner, Shaid Luqman, and in March 2009, sold it for £910,000.
KPMG now claims that, in breach of contract and/or DTZ’s duty of care, it overvalued the fort “beyond any reasonable margin of error”.
It claims that the true value of the property in February 2004 was between £1.6m and £3m.
KPMG asked for further information on the basis of assertions in the valuation that the current owner had spent millions on refurbishing the property and that various clients had tried to p