Opinion ID: 170014
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Tenant Allowance:

Text: The budget also contained an entry of several million dollars for a Tenant Allowance. App. 123. This allowance was money given to the tenants to outfit their suites for medical use. The budget entry was based on an estimate of $44 per usable square foot. Memorial Hospital has presented several emails that suggest that Healthcare Realty knewbefore the contract was signedthat a typical suite would in fact require between $50 and $60 per square foot. App. 705. It has also presented evidence that some potential tenants found the $44 allowance not adequate to do a medical suite. App. 140. Memorial Hospital claims that keeping the $44 figure in the budget rather than a higher figure, and failing to make clear that the allowance would not actually cover all of the improvements that tenants would demand, was negligent misrepresentation. The district court dismissed this claim as a matter of law, holding that because the Tenant Allowance was an estimate[ ], it should be characterized as an opinion under Wyoming law. App. 737. Other items on the budget have the notation Est., signifying that they were estimated. App. 122-23. The tenant allowance, however, noted just that it was [b]ased on $44.00 USF. App. 122. If Healthcare Realty meant that $44 per square foot was enough to outfit the medical suites, that is a fact that it was required to derive non-negligently. In a March 2000 letter to the Hospital, Healthcare Realty explained that it was forced to give the tenants significantly more than $44as much as $60 per square footbecause the tenants expected the allowance to cover virtually all costs of their suite construction. App. 442. However, the Hospital claims that it and the tenants were originally told that the $44 would be an adequate amount for a reasonable tenant finish. Aplt's Br. 15. One letter in the record by a tenant also suggests that he was led to believe that no additional funds would be necessary. App. 140. A reasonable jury could infer from this evidence that Healthcare Realty knew at the time that the $44 per square foot allowance was insufficient to cover what had been promised to the tenants. We do not agree with the district court that projections of this sort, when made by expert consultants, are mere opinions that cannot be deemed misrepresentations of fact. As in Gould, where an expert's valuation of land was actionable, 299 P. at 276, we believe that the amount of money reasonably necessary for a medical tenant to outfit an office is a matter of fact. [2] Indeed, a consultant's expertise in such matters is precisely what the client is paying for. We do not mean to suggestand Wyoming law would not supportthat a projection of this sort could be held to be a misrepresentation merely because it turned out to be incorrect. But there is evidence here that Healthcare Realty knew at the time that $44 was inadequate to prepare a medical suite. The Hospital should be allowed to prove that this figure was false and that Healthcare Realty failed to exercise reasonable care or competence in including this figure in their estimate and in representing what it would purchase, based on the information available to it when it prepared the budget.