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One of the most important questions involving professional liability is the extent to which a contractual client alleging lack of care and skill is able to sue in the tort of negligence besides any action for breach of the contract itself. In recent years this notion of concurrent liability seems to have gained almost universal acceptance among the English judiciary. However, as the following discussion will show, there is increasing evidence of dissatisfaction with the imposition of such a dual burden. This paper considers the policy arguments for and against concurrent liability, explains the significance of the issue in relation to limitation periods, measure of damages and contributory liability, and assesses the impact of the most recent cases upon the professional's position.

The recent revisions of the EEC Treaty brought about by the implementation of the Single European Act in July 1987 make it timely to consider the position of the surveyor in the context of EEC law. It may be tempting to cast aside such provisions as somehow secondary or peripheral, but this would be an unfortunate mistake. This article explores the relevance of EEC law to the surveyor at three levels:

In general terms, the law of negligence is more concerned with positive acts than omissions. Failure to help your neighbour in distress is usually no tort, even though it might not earn any moral approval. The rising incidence of vandalism and theft has led to a spate of cases in which the courts have been required to consider this general principle. In a typical situation, property owned by D may be empty or lacking in security measures. X, as an independent third party, then uses D's property to secure unlawful access to the property of P, the Plaintiff.

The House of Lords has just taken a bulldozer to defective premises law in the shape of D. & F. Estates v Church Commissioners [1988] 3 WLR 368, which will be published in the next issue of the Journal. The facts were reported fully in Structural Survey 6/3 when the Court of Appeal considered the case, but relate mainly to defective plastering carried out by subcontractors. The owners and occupiers of the premises unsuccessfully sued the main contractors for failing to supervise the subcontractors. This point was fairly narrow, but the House of Lords took the opportunity to declare its new views on building law generally. Textbook writers and practitioners, who have become accustomed to working with Anns v London Borough of Merlon [1978] AC 728 and its successors, will need to take considerable notice of the resulting picture.

In the three years since the position of local authorities in negligence was last considered in this journal (SS 2/4), there has been a considerable turnaround in judicial attitudes. Far from being every Plaintiff's favourite Defendant in defective building cases, the current state of the law reflects a more limited liability. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the way in which this has occurred and the problems that still dog the area.

Litigation arising from building disputes is notorious for the number of different parties involved and the complex interaction of claims based on tort and contract. In the light of recent development, it is worth considering the way in which the courts deal with the sharing out of blame and liability, both between Defendants and also as between Defendants and Plaintiff(s). Three issues can be problematic: (a) the relationship between contribution among Defendants and any contributory negligence by a Plaintiff; (b) the effect of limitation periods on contribution; and (c) the principles, if any, used by the courts to decide what is a just and fair’ contribution between Defendants.

‘Although in one sense water is water and always has the same properties it does not always have the same effect. Floodwater can properly be described as a common enemy, but water as such is not an enemy of man or beast or land. Indeed, in most circumstances, water can be described as a common friend.’

Increasing evidence exists to suggest that the courts are refusing to widen the negligence liability of surveyors any further. In part, as I explained in the previous issue of this journal, — in ‘Fraud and the surveyor’ — any such stance would mirror the apparently rediscovered value of contractual terms in limiting separate tortious liability. But an equally important factor is the greater discernment by the courts of the different functions which may be performed under the general umbrella of ‘surveying’. While nobody would suggest that the courts have ever believed that all surveyors spent their entire lives in gum‐boots wielding theodolites, cases from Yianni v Edwin Evans & Sons (1982) 1/1 SS 72 onwards have sometimes fuelled the belief that insufficient account has been taken of the different backgrounds of individual surveyors, the expertise demanded of various specialisms and the misperceptions of clients or consumers. The three recent cases discussed in this paper indicate judicial awareness that surveying tasks have legitimate boundaries.

The following materials were presented at a session of the History of Economics Society at its annual meeting, on July 6, 2003, at Duke University. Organized and chaired by Dan Hammond, the principal participants at the Roundtable were also, in order of speaking, Malcolm Rutherford, Ross Emmett, Warren Samuels, Brad Bateman, and Steven Medema.

Mr Malcolm J. Ross, previously commercial director of Carless Chemicals Ltd, has relinuiqshed that post to take up the appointment of managing director of Carless Chemicals Trading Ltd.