Opinion ID: 1927268
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Jones' certification, and Bell's reliance on it and on the survey

Text: Bell's second theory of liability was that Jones negligently certified that he had carefully surveyed the property . . . and that the corners [had] been found or placed as shown in the plat of survey. In addition to denying negligence, Jones asserted that Bell was contributorily negligent in relying on the plat of survey for architectural and construction purposes. [17] The trial court concluded that Jones was negligent in certifying the plat of survey as he did, that the certification caused Bell to rely on the survey for architectural and construction purposes, and that the inaccuracies in the survey proximately resulted in the increased construction costs which Bell sought to recover. The court also ruled that Bell failed to exercise the reasonable care of an architect of ordinary prudence  i.e., that he was contributorily negligent  when he relied on the survey for architectural and construction purposes. We uphold the trial court's findings of negligence by Jones and of proximate cause, but we reverse the finding of contributory negligence by Bell.
The trial court ruled that Jones breached the applicable standard of care of a surveyor in the District of Columbia by certifying the November 14, 1978, plat of survey as he did. Rodney Hansen, Bell's expert surveyor witness, testified that several different certifications are used by surveyors in their work, and that the particular certification that a reasonably prudent surveyor puts on his or her survey describes what type of survey it is and what the surveyor is certifying. Hansen also testified that if a reasonably prudent surveyor were preparing a house location plat, a disclaimer would be placed on it stating that the plat was not for determining the property lines . . . [and] that the existence of the property corners [was] not guaranteed by this plat. No such disclaimer appears on Jones' plat of survey. The certification that Jones placed on the plat of survey reads as follows: I hereby certify that I have carefully surveyed the property as shown and described hereon, in accordance with D.C. Surveyor's records, and have located all of the existing improvements thereon by transit and tape survey, and that the corners have been found or placed as shown, and that there are no encroachments either way across the property lines except as indicated. [Emphasis added.] This certification bears Jones' signature and is dated January 11, 1979, the date of the final revised plat. When his lawyer asked him what he had certified, Mr. Jones replied, I certified that measurements had been made in the field and we found them to be correct. Jones later admitted, however, that he had not carefully surveyed the property but instead had performed spot checks, which he conceded were not the same as carefully surveying the property. Furthermore, the property lines were shown on the plat of survey as due north, due east, due south, and due west, which indicated to Bell that the corners were all 90-degree angles. In fact, two of the angles were 90 degrees and 51 minutes, which caused Bell's architectural drawings to be substantially inaccurate. The evidence showed that Jones knew the angles were 90 degrees and 51 minutes. Although pertinent case law is sparse, there are several cases in which architects and surveyors have been held liable for damages resulting from negligent certifications. For example, the Supreme Court of Iowa has held that an architect owes a duty to his or her client to exercise reasonable care to see that the work is done in proper manner with proper materials. Among other ways, this duty is breached when the architect negligently certifies completion of defective or incomplete work. Roland A. Wilson & Associates v. Forty-O-Four Grand Corp., 246 N.W.2d 922, 925 (Iowa 1976) (citations omitted); accord, e.g., General Trading Corp. v. Burnup & Sims, Inc., 523 F.2d 98, 101 (3d Cir.1975) (land-owner may recover damages from architect when delay in construction of building resulted from architect's negligent certification of faulty construction work); Hutchinson v. Dubeau, 161 Ga.App. 65, 66, 289 S.E.2d 4, 5 (1982) (architect who certified the accuracy of a plat in plain English may be held liable to purchasers damaged by reasonable reliance upon the plat); Newton Investment Co. v. Barnard & Burk, Inc., 220 So.2d 822, 824 (Miss.1969) (An engineer or architect may be held liable for negligence in the improper issuance of cost or progress certificates (citations omitted)); Browning v. Maurice B. Levien & Co., 44 N.C.App. 701, 703-06, 262 S.E.2d 355, 357-358 (1980) (contractor's default on construction project resulted in foreclosure; architect held liable to property owners for negligent certification that contractor's work was 85.5 percent complete when in fact it was not); School District No. 172 v. Josenhans, 88 Wash. 624, 626, 153 P. 326, 327 (1915) (trial court found that negligence of architects resulted in collapse of building under weight of heavy snow on roof; ruling that architects' certificate of completion was evidence that the work had been completed to their satisfaction upheld on the ground that owners of building were justified in relying on the [architects'] judgment that it was a proper construction); see Annot., 43 A.L.R.2D 1227, 1229-1232 (1955); see also Rozny v. Marnul, 43 Ill.2d 54, 66, 250 N.E.2d 656, 663 (1969) (liability of surveyor to property owners for negligent misrepresentation based in part on surveyor's express, unrestricted and wholly voluntary `absolute guarantee for accuracy' appearing on the face of the inaccurate plat); cf. Security National Bank v. Lish, 311 A.2d 833, 834 (D.C.1973) (One engaged in supplying information has a duty to exercise reasonable care). Although these cases have arisen in various factual contexts, the common thread running through them is that a person who engages the services of a professional surveyor or architect has the right to rely on the latter's superior knowledge and skill and to expect that such professionals [will] fulfill the duty of reasonable diligence, skill, and ability. Jarrard v. Seifert, 22 Wash.App. 476, 479, 591 P.2d 809, 812 (1979) (citation omitted). More specifically, when a surveyor or architect undertakes to certify that something has been done or not done, or done in a certain way, the client has a right to rely on the professional knowledge and skill of the surveyor or architect in making that certification. The surveyor's or architect's duty of reasonable care to the client is breached when such a certification is negligently made, and if that breach results in injury to the client, he or she may recover damages. Roland A. Wilson & Associates v. Forty-O-Four Grand Corp., supra . [18] In this case the evidence established that Jones certified he had done something that he actually had not done. Bell's expert witness, Mr. Hansen, testified that a reasonably prudent surveyor in similar circumstances would not have made such a certification. On this record we affirm the trial court's finding that Jones negligently certified the plat of survey which he gave to Bell. See D.C.Code § 17-305(a) (1981). [19]
We also uphold the trial court's finding that Jones' negligent certification was a proximate cause of the increased construction costs for which Bell sought recovery. To establish proximate cause, the plaintiff must present evidence from which a reasonable [trier of fact] could find that there was a direct and substantial causal relationship between the defendant's breach of the standard of care and the plaintiff's injuries and that the injuries were foreseeable. Psychiatric Institute v. Allen, supra, 509 A.2d at 624 (citations omitted; emphasis in original). Bell testified that he relied on the plat of survey because of the language of the certification and because the drawing contained such exact measurements that he had no reason to suspect that the document was not reliable. He also observed that the plat of survey did not contain a disclaimer or warning that it should not be used for construction purposes or as a basis for drawing architectural plans. The evidence showed that because the true angle of two of the property corners was almost a full degree more than the 90 degrees shown on the plat of survey, Bell's architectural drawings were rendered substantially inaccurate, and some of the construction work had to be redone. This evidence was sufficient to prove a direct and substantial causal relationship between Jones' breach of the standard of care in certifying the plat of survey and Bell's injuries. The evidence also showed that Bell's injuries were foreseeable. Mr. Hansen, Bell's expert witness, testified that when making a certification, a prudent surveyor would try to describe exactly what he or she did and, when appropriate, would include a disclaimer that the corners of the property as shown on the plat were not guaranteed. This evidence, taken together with the language of the certificate and the evidence about the detail of the survey, was sufficient to prove that a reasonably prudent surveyor would have foreseen that the person for whom he or she was preparing the survey might rely on a statement included in the survey that the property had been carefully surveyed and the corners found or placed as shown. Browning v. Maurice B. Levien & Co., supra, 44 N.C.App. at 705, 262 S.E.2d at 358 (when the defendants undertook to perform services for the bank, it could be reasonably foreseen that the owners of the property, the plaintiffs in this case, might rely on the certification of defendants); see Kendall v. Gore Properties, Inc., 98 U.S.App.D.C. 378, 387, 236 F.2d 673, 682 (1956) (A defendant need not have foreseen the precise injury nor `should [he] have had notice of the particular method' in which a harm would occur, if the possibility of harm was clear to the ordinarily prudent eye (footnotes omitted)).
The trial court concluded that Bell failed to exercise the reasonable care of an architect of ordinary prudence when he relied on the plat of survey for architectural and construction purposes. The factual basis for the court's conclusion was its Finding of Fact No. 25, which was based on the testimony of John Saulton, Jones' architectural expert. Finding No. 25 reads as follows: A reasonably prudent architect of ordinary skill in the metropolitan Washington area would not have relied on the plat of survey prepared by [Jones] for construction drawings because it did not indicate any contours, utilities, or the angles where each corner of the property breaks, and because [Jones] had not been specifically asked to prepare the plat for construction purposes. We reverse the court's holding that Bell was contributorily negligent in relying on the plat of survey because Finding No. 25 for the most part lacks evidentiary support, and also because we conclude as a matter of law that Bell was not contributorily negligent to the extent that he relied on Jones' certification. The finding that a reasonably prudent architect of ordinary skill would not have relied on the plat of survey prepared by [Jones] for construction drawings because it did not indicate any contours, utilities, or the angles where each corner of the property breaks is not supported by the testimony on which it is purportedly based, that of Mr. Saulton. On direct examination Saulton testified that the plat of survey prepared by Jones was not the type of survey that an architect would use in preparing contract documents because it did not have any utilities, contours, or a clear indication of where each corner breaks. On cross-examination, however, he said that he still agreed with his earlier statement, given in a deposition, that it would not be inappropriate for an architect to obtain a boundary survey initially and to get the topographical information at some later stage in making the plans. As Bell rightly points out, whether the drawing does or does not depict the contours of the land has nothing to do with the accuracy of those features which are depicted. Saulton also agreed with his earlier statement that a reasonably prudent architect could get an initial map which he had . . . measured angles and so on but not the contours and elevation information, which could be supplied later. While he said that it would [not] be as good to get the information in two stages and that he personally would not do things that way, he never said that a reasonably prudent architect would not do things that way. In addition, though Saulton testified that he would not rely on such information in applying for a building permit unless it were all together on a document with the stamp of an engineer because of his own potential liability, he did not say that a reasonably prudent architect would not rely on such information received in separate documents bearing a certificate that the property had been carefully surveyed and the corners found or placed as shown. We reiterate that what the witness himself would have done in similar circumstances does not establish the standard of care for the profession. Meek v. Shepard, supra, 484 A.2d at 581-582. Thus we conclude that there was no support in Mr. Saulton's testimony for the finding that [a] reasonably prudent architect . . . would not have relied on the plat of survey prepared by [Jones] because it did not indicate any contours, utilities, or the angles where each corner of the property breaks. . . . [20] On the question of whether Bell was contributorily negligent when he relied on the plat for construction purposes because [Jones] had not been specifically asked to prepare the plat for construction purposes, we hold as a matter of law that he was not. Simply stated, the fact that Jones had not been specifically asked to prepare the plat for construction purposes was irrelevant to the question of whether Bell could reasonably rely on the certification and on the angle measurements which Jones certified. We reach this conclusion for three reasons. First, Bell's failure to tell Jones the purpose for which the survey would be used did not cause Jones to make the certification; he did that on his own initiative. Thus there was no causal link between Bell's negligence in failing to tell Jones the intended purpose of the survey and the injury resulting from Jones' negligent certification; in other words, that negligent omission by Bell did not contribute to this injury. Second, no evidence, expert or otherwise, was introduced which showed that a reasonably prudent architect was not entitled to rely, for architectural and construction purposes, on a certification that the property had been carefully surveyed and the corners found or placed as shown, even though the surveyor had not been specifically asked to prepare the survey for construction purposes. Most importantly, Bell was not bound to anticipate negligent conduct on the part of Jones; on the contrary, he could reasonably assume that Jones would fulfill his duties, including the duty to exercise reasonable care in making the certification. See Stager v. Schneider, 494 A.2d 1307, 1311 (D.C.1985). Accordingly, we hold that Bell was entitled to rely on Jones' certification that he had carefully surveyed the property and that the corners had been found or placed as shown, and hence on the corner angle measurements themselves as shown in the plat of survey. See Jacka v. Ouachita Parish School Board, 249 La. 223, 231, 186 So.2d 571, 575 (1966) (architect was entitled to rely on the accuracy of a survey in preparing construction plans even though the survey had been made five years earlier for the purpose of securing an FHA loan); Browning v. Maurice B. Levien & Co., supra, 44 N.C.App. at 705, 262 S.E.2d at 358 (reliance by property owners on architect's certification could be reasonably foreseen); School District No. 172 v. Josenhans, supra, 88 Wash. at 626, 153 P. at 327 (property owners held justified in relying on architects' certification that building construction had been completed to their satisfaction); Jarrard v. Seifert, supra, 22 Wash.App. at 480, 591 P.2d at 812 (developers entitled to rely on superior knowledge of architects and surveyors and to expect that [they will] fulfill the duty of reasonable diligence, skill, and ability); see also Dessert Seed Co. v. Drew Farmers Supply, Inc., 248 Ark. 858, 865, 454 S.W.2d 307, 311 (1970) (utmost reliance can be placed on a certification). The trial court erred in ruling that Bell's reliance on the certification, and hence on the survey, amounted to contributory negligence.