A businessman has won a three-year legal battle against a surveyor who did not warn him the house he was buying was below a busy airport flight path.

Yesterday, Graham Farley had his £10,000 damages for negligence, awarded by a High Court judge in 1999, reinstated by the House of Lords, which overturned rulings by the Court of Appeal that the surveyor could not be held responsible.

Mr Farley, who owned a flat in London, a house in Brighton and overseas properties, was thinking about retiring in 1990 while he was still in his 30s and set about seeking what Lord Steyn called a "gracious country residence", Riverside House in Blackboys, near Uckfield, 15 miles from Gatwick Airport.

The Law Lord said the house was in the middle of the countryside, there was a stream running through the grounds, which comprised a croquet lawn, tennis court, orchard, paddock and swimming pool.

He said: "There was one question mark over the transaction. For the plaintiff, a property offering peace and tranquillity was the raison d'etre of the proposed purchase."

So Mr Farley employed local surveyor Michael Skinner, asking him to report specifically on whether the property would be affected by aircraft noise.

Mr Skinner, who practices as MS Associates in Hurstpierpoint, told him it was "unlikely that the property will suffer greatly from such noise, although some planes will inevitably cross the area depending on the direction of the wind and the positioning of the flight paths".

Reassured, Mr Farley bought the house for £420,000 in 1991 and spent £125,000 on modernisations. But when he moved in, he discovered his home was near a main navigation beacon, the Mayfield Stack.

Lord Steyn said: "At certain busy times, aircraft waiting to land at Gatwick would be stacked up, maintaining a spiral course around the beacon until there was a landing slot at the airport."

Mr Farley took legal action, and in 1999 Judge Peter Baker ruled that he could not claim for alleged reduction in the house's value but was entitled to damages for nuisance because the surveyor had been negligent.

The surveyor took the case to the Court of Appeal, which had to hear the case twice when the first bench of two judges failed to agree. At the second hearing, two of the three judges ruled the award of damages was "contrary to principle" and allowed the appeal.

Lord Steyn, whose ruling was endorsed by Lords Browne-Wilkinson, Clyde, Hutton and Scott of Foscote, said Mr Farley had made it clear to the surveyor that the impact of aircraft noise was important to him and that this was part of the contract between them. He said if the law was that a professional man could please himself, whether or not he complied with a promise made in a contract, it would be "seriously deficient".

Lord Steyn said the award of £10,000 for nuisance should stand.