Can I be sued?

Hello my family and I rent in Spain and we were due to move into a new rental in November this year but during bad weather the house we were in was severly damaged so we had to move out immediately. We found a new place but had to sign a full contract so we contacted the people whos house we were going to rent in november apologising and explaining the situation saying we could not take their rental in november. We never signed any contracts with these people or paid any deposit etc but they are now demanding ones months rent as expenses which in a way i can understand but at the moment we are broke as we lost everything in the damage and still waiting for insurance to pay out.

Should i get a solicitor or just ignore them as nothing was ever confirmed officially justbby email.

I don't understand what you mean "nothing was confirmed officially". Did you agree, either orally, or by email, to rent the guy's house? If so, you had a deal, a contract, and the other guy probably planned his life based on that assumption. You say your options are to get a solicitor or to ignore them. The solicitor and any defence would almost certainly cost about a month's rent, so if you have that money why not do the decent thing, accept that you have mucked the other guy around, and pay him his month's rent? Otherwise you will have both welshed on the deal and still ended up forking out the money. Of course, if the chap pursues and wins his case you will end up much more out of pocket. Do as you would be done by. Sorry to sound so judgemental, but you did ask for opinions.

If you didn't sign a contract or pay any deposit, I would just ignore them.  There's been no breach of contract becuase nothing was signed.  It sounds like they are trying it on.

Out of interest are they Spanish or British the ones threating to sue you? 

Hello GuyT thanks for replying sorry should have been a bit clearer when i mean officially i mean nothing was signed and there were no terms or anything agreed. Everything was by email which as far as I am still aware is still very difficult to use in court as confirmation of any contract, especially if its 'free' email accounts.

I have accepted that there are problems, I wouldnt say 'mucked him about' as I could say that God destroyed my home and he is to blame for making us move home early.

Hello Sanchez1 thanks for reply they are British

 Did you exchange emails for this?

We exchanged emails about the rental however no deposit or even the cost of the rental was mentioned in the emails.

kcter,

I wouldn't lose any sleep over it and I certainly wouldn't feel guilty.  It wasn't your fault.

Cheers

Sanchez1

Ok, so you were supposed to take over the property in November.  When did you advise them that this would not be the case?? If it was more than one month before you were supposed to move in I think the owner of the property is not being fair as he had plenty of time to rent it again.

Furthermore you never count on something until money has been paid, as far as im concerned you did not pay a deposit and therefore the property should have never been reserved.

Depending on what is in the emails he will have a case against you or not.

Joan

Hello joanmalaga

We told them straight away which was in July so a good 3 months before we were due to move in. The emails just really contain details about dates and an email sometime in May when we said we would definietly take it.

 As Sanchez1 has very rightly said: no worries. It will be completely un-economical for him to pursue this further than this initial requests to you.

Thank you all for your replies. We have happily been renting in Spain for 6 years now and we have never missed a rental payment or had any problems, this was something we didnt want to do as the place we had to turn down was a lovely villa but it was out of our hands.

Well, if the last email was in May and you have not heard back from them till now i belive you have nothing to worry about.  There is no way that soo many months later and having nothing signed that they would have a leg to stand on and i doubt very much that they will go to the expense of taking on a lawyer for this matter.

Joan