The Court held that a mortgage broker who passes on a third-party expert valuation to prospective investors, without holding itself out as possessing valuation expertise, does not engage in misleading or deceptive conduct merely by communicating the valuation's conclusions and incorporating the valuation figure into loan summary documents, even absent an express disclaimer. The key distinction is that the broker was a known non-expert transmitting an identified expert's opinion, and a disclaimer of knowledge as to the reasonableness of the valuation was deducible from the circumstances, including the nature of the parties and the character of the information. The valuer was held liable for negligent valuation, with gross overvaluation treated as an indicia of negligence sufficient to support damages of $1,104,578.71 plus statutory interest, notwithstanding the absence of expert evidence identifying a specific methodological error.
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