Corelogic U.K. Limited v Landmark Valuation Services Limited
| Court | High Court of Justice, King's Bench Division, Business and Property Courts of England and Wales, Technology and Construction Court |
| Judge | Recorder Andrew Singer KC, sitting as a judge of the Technology and Construction Court |
| Judgment date | 27 July 2026, handed down remotely at 10.00am |
| Hearing dates | 12, 13, 14 and 18 May and 22 June 2026 |
| Claim number | HT-2024-000279 |
| Claimant | Corelogic U.K. Limited |
| Defendant | Landmark Valuation Services Limited |
| Outcome | Claim succeeds in the sum of 332,405.44 pounds. Virtual machine costs awarded for the period after March 2022. Labour costs refused as unproven. Waiver and estoppel rejected. No declaration granted. |
Summary
A company sued its supplier for failing to build a permanent interface it had promised, so that the company had gone on running a temporary one at its own cost. The supplier admitted it had taken no steps to build it, and still defeated most of the claim.
The claim was for virtual machine costs of 337,275.33 pounds to trial and labour costs of between 511,577.59 and 614,424.54 pounds. The court awarded 332,405.44 pounds on the first head and nothing on the second. The difference between them was evidence: the hosting costs were documented, the labour was not.
Background and facts
Both parties sit in the domestic mortgage valuation chain. All domestic mortgage valuations flow through the defendant's platform, and a large proportion of valuation providers use the claimant's survey products. They dealt under an agreement of 14 March 2016, varied by deed on 22 January 2019. Under it the defendant was to develop and provide an application programme interface for the claimant, in place of the temporary interface it had been given in the meantime.
The interface was never built. The defendant accepted it had taken no steps to develop one. Its case was that on the true construction of the varied agreement it was never obliged to provide one, and that the claimant had waived the breach or was estopped from complaining of it.
The issue
Whether the defendant was obliged to provide the interface at all; whether the deed of variation changed the date for doing so; whether waiver or estoppel barred the claim; and what loss the claimant could prove under each of its two heads.
The decision
The construction argument failed. The obligation was an express one, and the deed of variation moved the time for it from March 2019 to 13 March 2022 rather than removing it. Two implied term arguments pleaded as fallbacks did not arise once that was decided, and the judge said so rather than deciding them. The allegation of a failure to exercise reasonable skill and care was not made out, no evidence having been produced.
Waiver and estoppel also failed. The agreement contained a clause dealing with waiver, and the defendant did not seek to estop the claimant from relying on it. No detriment was identified in its witness evidence or the documents.
There is nothing in Rock Advertising which affects, in my judgment, the ability of a party to rely upon a no waiver clause such as Clause 23 other than the possibility that a party may be estopped from relying on that clause.Recorder Andrew Singer KC, paragraph 75
On remoteness the defendant argued that loss running past the end of the agreement in March 2022 was outside what the parties had contemplated. As the monopoly provider of the platform it could not have refused the claimant access, both sides had proceeded on the footing that access would run through a proper interface from March 2022, and the cost of continuing with the temporary one was not an unusual type of loss.
In my judgment, the decisions in SAAMCO and The Achilleas do not in any way reverse the principles first set down in Hadley v. Baxendale.Recorder Andrew Singer KC, paragraph 72
The two heads of loss then parted company. The virtual machine costs were awarded, reduced only to strip out January, February and March 2022, which fell before the extended date for compliance. The labour costs were refused. No timesheets or other records had been kept from 2023, when the claim had already been threatened, and no proper explanation was offered. The figures were impressionistic rather than accurate, and pleaded as a range even after re-amendment.
Even if such records are not kept as a matter of course they ought to be kept to support a claim for damages and if they are not then a claim may fail to be proved.Recorder Andrew Singer KC, paragraph 137
The defendant tried to use the technical expert material against the figures. It was held inadmissible on quantum and outside the case management order.
Neither party was permitted to call expert evidence on the quantum claimed.Recorder Andrew Singer KC, paragraph 65
Two points were left open rather than decided. Because the virtual machine award stood, the judge did not consider whether the exclusion and limitation terms were reasonable, and declined to do so. The meaning of a fully supported interface was addressed only as an alternative, the judge saying he would have so found had he needed to. He also refused a declaration of an indefinite right to be indemnified, a discretionary remedy reserved for exceptional circumstances not identified here.
Practical implications
An admission on liability buys nothing on quantum. This defendant conceded it had done no work at all on the thing it had promised, called no quantum evidence of its own, and still defeated a whole head of loss by putting the claimant to proof. The same split runs through construction disputes between a variation that is conceded and the cost of it, which is not.
The labour claim failed on records, not on merit. Nobody suggested the work had not been done. The claimant could not show who had done it or for how long, and the court treated the absence of timesheets after the claim was threatened as unexplained rather than ordinary. Prolongation and disruption claims run on the same evidence.
Note what was not decided. The reasonableness of the exclusion and limitation terms was not ruled on, because it did not arise.
Practice points
- Open a contemporaneous record the day a claim is contemplated. Timesheets, allocation sheets and resource returns cost little at the time and cannot be reconstructed three years later.
- Do not let an admission of breach relax the proof of loss. Plead and evidence each head as though liability were still fought, because the other side can sit back and put you to proof without calling a witness.
- Check what the case management order lets your expert address. Material that strays into quantum can be excluded at trial, which leaves the figures resting on factual evidence alone.
- A no waiver clause still holds. Conduct that looks like acceptance of a breach will not by itself defeat the clause, though a party may be estopped from relying on it.
- Estoppel needs detriment proved in evidence. Asserting it in submissions and pointing at a course of dealing is not enough.
- Figures given as a range stay a range. Confidence in an estimate does not convert it into a proven loss, and a judge who has found a witness prone to exaggeration will look for the contemporaneous document instead.
- Read the variation for what it moved. Here the deed shifted the date for performance rather than removing the obligation, which set both the date of breach and the start of recoverable loss.