In theUnited States Court of AppealsFor the Seventh Circuit____________No. 05-1144KEMPER/PRIME INDUSTRIAL PARTNERS,Plaintiff-Appellant,v.MONTGOMERY WATSON AMERICAS, INC.,Defendant-Appellee,v.THE PRIME GROUP, INC.,Third-Party Defendant.____________Appeal from the United States District Courtfor the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.No. 97 C 4278—Ronald A. Guzman, Judge.____________ARGUED NOVEMBER 27, 2006—DECIDED JUNE 12, 2007PUBLISHED JUNE 19, 2007____________Before BAUER, WOOD, and EVANS, Circuit Judges.WOOD, Circuit Judge. This case concerns who is respon-sible for certain environmental clean-up costs. Kemper/Prime Industrial Partners (“Kemper/Prime”), the plaintiff,claims that an environmental assessment of a parcel ofland performed by Warzyn, Inc., the predecessor of defen-dant Montgomery Watson Americas, Inc. (“Montgomery”),was deficient insofar as it failed to reveal to Kemper/Prime2 No. 05-1144the full extent of contamination and clean-up costs. Theproperty in question was called the Chicago EnterpriseCenter (“the Property”), which Kemper/Prime purchasedafter receiving Warzyn’s report in 1990. Later, when itdecided to refinance the Property in 1996, Kemper/Primeconducted another environmental assessment of theland. The new assessor discovered contamination thatwas present in 1990 but that Warzyn had not detected.Kemper/Prime sued Montgomery, Warzyn’s successor,claiming negligent misrepresentation on Warzyn’s part,but the district court ruled that its evidence of damageswas insufficient and dismissed the case with prejudice.We affirm.IIn February 1990, an entity called the Prime Group, notto be confused with plaintiff Kemper/Prime, hired Warzynto conduct an environmental assessment of the Property,a 120-acre stretch of industrial land in south Chicago, todetermine whether the Property had unknown environ-mental hazards or problems. Warzyn understood that theProperty would soon be bought by a new partnership to beknown as Kemper/Prime, which was created to make thatpurchase by partners in the Prime Group. As planned,Kemper/Prime purchased the Property after Warzynissued its final reports in June of 1990.As part of its assessment, Warzyn conducted a four-month evaluation of the Property, including a site visit, anhistorical records search, a review of previous reportsabout the Property, an investigation of information fromstate and federal sources relevant to the Property, soiltesting, soil boring, installation of monitoring wells,analyses of decontamination procedures, water levelmeasurements, ground water sampling, PCB wipe sam-pling procedures and other field testing. Warzyn concludedNo. 05-1144 3that there were still unreviewed areas in the Property, butbased on the scope of the work that the Prime Group hadcommissioned, it did not investigate these additionalareas.Warzyn published two reports for the Prime Group inJune of 1990. The reports identified some contamination,focusing in particular on two sections of land (identifiedas SB17 and SB8) within the Property that were part ofa “major area of concern” south of Building S. The PrimeGroup had expected Warzyn to retrieve Sanborn Fire Mapsfor the Property, but Warzyn reported that such mapswere unavailable. At some point after Warzyn’s assess-ment, the parties learned that this was incorrect, and thatSanborn Maps were available for the years 1897, 1913,1947, 1950, 1976, and 1987. The Sanborn Maps for 1947and 1950 showed 26 underground storage tanks on theProperty. The later two Sanborn Maps showed none ofthese tanks.After issuing its reports, Warzyn sent a short letter tothe Prime Group noting that Warzyn had “developed aproposal to quantify the extent of contamination identi-fied.” Neither the reports nor the letter stated that Warzynhad taken the next step and quantified the full environ-mental remediation costs for the Property. Instead, thereports and the letter identify some costs for cleaningup some of the identified contamination. In context, itappears that the costs may relate to the “major area ofconcern” near Building S, because the cost discussionfollows immediately after the discussion of the Building Sarea. That area is not a part of the Property at issue inthis litigation.Between 1993 and 1996, two other environmentalassessments were done on the Property—one by DunnCorporation in 1993 and one by Carlson Environmental,Inc., in 1996. Also during this time, Kemper/Prime subdi-4 No. 05-1144vided and sold significant sections of the Property. Takentogether, these sales yielded millions of dollars in profitsfor Kemper/Prime.Kemper/Prime was nevertheless displeased to learn thatthe Property had more environmental contamination thanit had been led to believe before its initial purchase. In1997, Kemper/Prime sued Montgomery. Then in 1999,several of the entities that had purchased sections of theProperty joined the suit as plaintiffs. Also in 1999, Mont-gomery filed a third-party claim against the Prime Grouppursuant to an indemnification provision in the 1990agreement between the Prime Group and Warzyn. In 2003,the district court dismissed the claims brought by the1999 plaintiffs. No claims have been filed betweenKemper/Prime and the Prime Group. (This is importantbecause a defendant’s impleader under FED. R. CIV. P. 14of a party that is not diverse from the plaintiff does notdestroy jurisdiction. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(b).)Although Kemper/Prime filed its complaint againstMontgomery in 1997, the litigation dragged on for severalyears. In 2003, Montgomery made two motions in limineabout the standard of damages the district court shouldemploy, questioning whether Kemper/Prime would be ableto satisfy its burden of proof under the appropriatestandard. The district court expressed “serious doubtsabout the ability of . . . Kemper/Prime . . . to provideevidence of damages.” Kemper/Prime then filed a “Memo-randum Of Evidence On Damages That It Will Present AtTrial.” After Montgomery filed a responsive brief, thedistrict court concluded that “Plaintiff cannot offer proofof all necessary parameters of the damages calculation,and [therefore] Plaintiff is barred from presenting evidenceof damages at trial” and dismissed the case with prejudice,in substance granting summary judgment in Montgomery’sfavor. Kemper/Prime appeals its dismissal to this court.We note that Montgomery’s claim for indemnificationNo. 05-1144 5against the Prime Group is still pending in
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