Prime Retail Development, Inc. Prime Retail sued Marbury Engineering Company, seeking damages for alleged breach of contract, professional negligence, and negligent misrepresentation. Judgment was entered upon the jury’s verdict for Marbury. Prime Retail’s subsequent motion for new trial was denied. On appeal, Prime Retail challenges the jury’s verdict as contrary to the evidence and contends that the court incorrectly charged the jury. Because Prime Retail has demonstrated no reversible error, we affirm. In May 1998, Prime Retail, a commercial real estate development company owned and operated by James Morton, contracted to purchase certain real estate owned by several members of the Chandler family hereinafter, “the Chandlers”. Morton recognized that the site had previously been a service station and was concerned about environmental issues. He therefore placed in the sales contract Paragraph 11-C, which pertinently provided, Buyer shall be entitled to perform, at Buyer’s sole expense, any environmental tests or assessments that Buyer deems appropriate. In the event that such tests and assessments determine that remediation and/or risk assessment is necessary, Seller shall be solely responsible for all costs of any such remediation and/or risk assessment, and the Inspection Period shall be extended until such time as Buyer, Seller, and the governing authority shall agree upon an acceptable remediation or risk assessment plan. Seller shall be entitled to terminate this Agreement, on or before the date that is sixty 60 days after it has been determined that the cost of any remediation shall exceed $100,000.00. The parties agreed that Prime Retail had until October 5, 1998, to complete its environmental inspection.
After entering into the sales contract, Prime Retail retained Marbury, a civil engineering and land surveying firm, to survey the boundary lines of the property and to complete a “Phase I Audit” on the property before the inspection period expired. Prime Retail’s expert engineer explained at trial, A Phase I audit is a non-intrusive audit where you just review records, inspect the site, interview people, but you don’t take any samples. If, during the Phase I audit, you believe that there could be contamination at the site, if there is a reasonable expectation that there could be, then it is proper to recommend a Phase II audit. And a Phase II audit is an intrusive audit . . . where you dig holes and take samples and collect groundwater and test the soil and test the groundwater to see if there is contamination. During the inspection period, Marbury advised Morton that a building owned by the adjacent property owner encroached upon the subject property. As the end of the inspection period drew near, Morton testified, he repeatedly asked Marbury when he would receive the written report of the Phase I Audit; with each query, Marbury told him that the site contained no environmental problems and that it needed only to compile a report. With that verbal assurance, Morton recalled, he mailed a letter to the Chandlers on October 2 notifying them that the property was acceptable and that Prime Retail would proceed with the closing then scheduled in about 30 days, provided that the boundary issue was resolved.
