Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/836

 822 V. BENCH AND BAR exposition reference may be made to the case of Smith v. Land & House Property Corporation, 28 Ch. D. 14, where the vendee under a contract for the sale of certain property resisted an action for specific performance on the ground of misrepresentation, the vendor having stated that the property was let to " a most desirable tenant," when in fact the tenant had been in arrears on his last quarter's rent, and soon afterward went into liquidation : " It is material to observe that it is often fallaciously assumed that a state- ment of opinion cannot involve the statement of a fact. In a case where the facts are equally well known to both parties, what one of them says to another is frequently nothing but an expression of opinion. The statement of such opinion is in a sense a statement of a fact about the condition of a man's own mind, but only of an irrelevant fact, for it is of no consequence what the opinion is. But if the facts are not equally well known to both sides, then a statement of opinion by the one who knows the facts best involves very often a statement of a material fact, for he impKedly states that he knows facts which justify his opinion. Now a landlord knows the property is let to a most desirable ten- ant; other persons either do not know them at all or do not know them equally well, and if the landlord says that he considers that the relations between himself and his tenant are satisfactory, he really avers that the facts peculiarly within his knowledge are such as to render that opinion reasonable. Now are the statements here statements which involve such a representation of material facts.? They are statements on a subject as to which prima facie the vendors know everything and the purchasers nothing. The vendors state that the property is let to a most desirable tenant; what does that mean.'' I agree that it is not a guaranty that the tenant will go on paying his rent, but it is to my mind a guaranty of a different sort, and amounts at least to an assertion that nothing has occurred in the relations between the landlord and the tenant which can be considered to make the tenant an unsatisfactory one. That is an asser- tion of a specific fact. Was it a true assertion? Having regard to what took place between Lady Day and Mid-