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Instructions to expert valuers
It is generally accepted that courts are very reluctant to over-turn the conclusions of expert determinations. There are however some rules of broad application:
The touchstone is whether or not the parties have agreed to be bound: in the third bullet point above, they have agreed to be bound by the determination; in the circumstances of the first two bullet points above, the parties have not agreed to be bound by the work of the expert.
This article looks at the first of these circumstances through the prism of two recent cases: in the first it was claimed that the valuer had not considered all of the relevant information; in the second it was maintained that a procedural defect had been sufficient to strike at the valuer’s determination. The cases provide object lessons to us all.