compensation
The court says the builder, developer and architects will have to compensate the British buyers
29.06.09 - 15:12 -
The Malaga Provincial Court has awarded damages of almost 78,000 euros to seven British owners of luxury villas in Estepona for construction defects. The majority of the villas on the Los Cármenes residential development had serious problems with their roofs, which had to be dismantled and rebuilt soon after the construction work had finished. The court has found the developer, the builder, the architect and the technical architect to be equally responsible for the faults because “the implementation, direction, inspection and control of the construction project all contributed to the ruin”.
This sentence overrules the previous decision made by an Estepona court to reject the case brought by the seven owners against those responsible for the building work. The majority of the property owners in Los Cármenes are British.
“The developer sold the houses as luxury villas, but the quality was so poor that the roofs simply fell in”, says the owners’ lawyer, Juan Godofredo Giménez.
The lawyer adds that “both the builder and the developer closed their companies as soon as the work had finished to avoid claims”.
However just seven of the 35 owners affected took legal action to claim damages.
“In general the owners had little faith in the Spanish judicial system, and so only seven decided to go ahead with the lawsuit”, explains Giménez.
The new sentence establishes that the roofs of the seven houses in question had serious defects caused mainly by deficient damp-proofing.
The ruling adds that while the problem was with the construction work, the architect and the technical architect were still responsible for supervising the building and controlling the quality of the materials used.
