can't have found a better...

[joham]

Surely you can't have found a better man than your own brother!

I know we should use sentences like 'We couldn't have found a better place (than this)'. But I've quite often come across 'can't have found a better...' in our test paper, like the sentence above. Is it OK too?

Thank you in advance.

 

[SlickVic9000]

(Not a Teacher)

It doesn't sound quite right to me. I suppose it's a bit ambiguous because of the present perfect. However, I'm not a grammarian, so I'll let the teachers make the ruling on this one.

Either way, the inclusion of "can't" seems superfluous to me when you could just leave it at "haven't".

 

[5jj]

Surely you can't have found a better man than your own brother!

The words suggest to me that the speaker is expressing surprise/disbelief that 'you' have found a better man than your brother.