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Jon Banister, East Coast Editor
A doctor who hired JLL to help him develop a 14-story apartment building in D.C. is suing the commercial real estate giant over financial projections he claims were manipulated and caused him to lose millions of dollars on the deal.
Rishi Bhatnagar filed the lawsuit last week in Cook County, Illinois, where JLL is headquartered. The suit involves the 115-unit Pinnacle apartment building that Bhatnagar delivered in 2024 at 7 New York Ave. NE in the NoMa neighborhood.
Bhatnagar, a Laurel, Maryland-based orthopedic surgeon who founded Precision Ortohpedics & Sports Medicine, had invested in multifamily deals before but isn’t a specialist in the sector. The lawsuit says he “engaged and relied upon JLL precisely because he did not possess JLL’s claimed expertise in that field.”
The developer sold the building in April for $30.5M to July Residential. Now, Bhatnagar says in the lawsuit that he lost more than $7.4M on the deal.
He is seeking $12.4M in damages from JLL, combining those losses with fees, interest and $4.3M in lost opportunity damages — the potential gain he could have received for investing his money elsewhere. The lawsuit asserts JLL is liable for breach of contract, fraud, fraudulent inducement, negligent misrepresentation and breach of fiduciary duty.
JLL didn’t respond to Bisnow‘s requests for comment.
The lawsuit, filed by Jordan Shea and Alexander Loftus of Chicago-based Loftus & Eisenberg Ltd., says JLL inflated its projected income for the project “to make an unfinanceable transaction appear financeable.”
The suit details a series of financial projections JLL made for the project starting in March 2021.
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