Court awards house buyers partial refund for ceiling collapse

A young couple whose living room ceiling collapsed in 2011 due to a latent defect have been ordered to be refunded part of the purchase price but no damages, after it not proven that the previous owner had been aware of the structural defect.

Judge Anna Felice, presiding the First Hall of the Civil Court heard how two years after Karl and Melanie Rizzo Naudi had bought their Naxxar home from Matthew Miceli Demajo for nearly a quarter of a million Euro, they had been rudely awoken one morning by strange noises, which was likened to a cascade of pebbles coming from their living room.

The husband had gone downstairs to investigate, just in time to see a large piece of masonry detaching itself from the ceiling and crashing to the ground. Moments later the rest of the ceiling followed, bringing down with it a bedroom and en suite bathroom from the upper floor.

Fortunately, no one was injured in the collapse.

The couple had filed an action for damages against the house's previous owner, arguing that he had sold them a property with latent structural defects.

The court observed that the defendant Miceli Demajo had purchased the house as an unconverted property in 2003 and had engaged an architectural firm to carry out a number of alterations, including the construction of the bedroom which eventually collapsed. Miceli Demajo argued that he could not have told them about the defect as he had not known about it himself.

Before buying the house, the couple had engaged an architect to inspect the building. That architect testified to having been told by the defendant that there had been an “unsightly” structural support beam which he had removed and replaced with concrete. Miceli Demajo denied saying this and produced as a witness the architect who had planned the alterations. Architect David Drago said that the load on the support beams was double that which had been expected, leading the stone to be close to its “limit state” with a very low safety factor. 

Another architect, engaged by the plaintiffs after the structure collapsed, had reported that the design of the stone roof structure “would not have the factor of safety expected by modern design standards.” 

A court-appointed expert had established that the strength of the beams had been dangerously overestimated, given the fact that they had previously been part of a roof and might have been exposed to water damage. His report had concluded that the combination of structural beams and concrete slabs had been utilised where reinforced concrete should have been used. There was no way of telling this from the outside, he added. The defendant had denied ever assuring the couple that the structural alterations had used reinforced concrete.

From the evidence, the court said it was evident that the plaintiffs had no way of knowing about the defect.  

The judge upheld the plaintiffs' claim, saying that the court was satisfied that the defect had been hidden from them. It noted that even in though the couple had filed an actio aestimatoria asking for the difference between the price paid and the value of the defective property – established at €30,000 – this did not preclude the seller from having to also pay for the damages suffered by the buyer. However, for the action for damages to succeed, the plaintiffs would have to prove that the person who sold them the property had been aware of the defect. “Certainly it had not been proven that the defendant had been aware that the beam had not been replaced with reinforced concrete,” the court held.

As it had not been proven that Miceli Demajo had been aware of the defect before selling the house, the court did not uphold the plaintiffs' request for damages, however, instead ordering the vendor to refund the couple the €30,000 difference in value.