Rough justice yet again!

Justin/Morerosado/Poppyseed/Tish/Axwhale/ maria, ..........and others who have stuck with me and my anger without insult!

Thanks so much for your kind words and continued support. It will be 8 years in June since our dream of owning a modest apartment in Spain started. I won't give up while there's hope of justice, but i'm not a wealthy man, and it was my life's savings I lost as well as the money fighting the case over the years, so we may have come to the end of the road? 

Please keep up the good work of supporting those wronged. Many have lost much more than I have, and desperately need the system to change to one of common sense and reason. Not much to ask is it?

Any updates on gaining support of MEP's to highlight our cause?

It would be a useful exercise to identify how much money is actually tied up in the legal fight for justice across the board (i.e. total deposited amounts, property values of those threatened by demolition etc etc).

Perhaps if the financial magnitude was more clearly identified then they might find it far more difficult to ignore the severity of this situation. Far greater pressure needs to be adopted if this Spanish government is ever to be made accountable to sort out this horrendous travesty of justice that's happening in Spain right now.

I wonder if Suzanne (Spanish Property Scandal) or others have considered contacting AVAAZ (a wonderful global organisation that highlights various causes and communicates via effective petitions).

This message was last edited by ads on 02/03/2010.

Not sure if the AIFOS subscribers (if I can call you that) have seen the latest press release on the 'Spanish Property Insight' site, if you have, my apologies.

http://www.spanishpropertyinsight.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4835

KP

yes thanks. That's the article that revived the thread a couple of days ago. What can you say?  With virtually no regulation on known crooked developers due to brown envelopes, and a justice system that does little for those wronged, it's a scam from the bottom to the very top. Unless someone steps in from Euro land (which looks highly unlikely) then many people will have fallen foul to the system which has proved once again just how wrong it is.

Again: 

Time to use loss actions ( tort-negligency) against those who should have secured on the existence of Bank Guarantees: conveyancers, Banks...

Who have said the fight is over?

For this actions to be available, an effective loss is needed, and... it seems the loss is now becoming more than evident.

maria

but who pays?, and how long and much money would it take to get anything back.  It's taken me 8 years so far and despite having a court embargo on an Aifos property and winning our case against them, still I have nothing!!!  Aifos have thousands of properties and we could have given any one of them by the courts to match the cash settlement if they wanted to give us justice?  Instead we are just creditors behind a huge list of creditors.

People are sick to the teeth of having to go to lawyers and waiting and waiting for justice which often never happens, when the laws should be in place to secure what is rightfully theirs from which ever crook has stolen it from them, and if that's not possible because the unregulated crook has gone bust, or during the unreasonable court delays, then the state should face their mistakes and compensate those they have let down accordingly.

I know my case is just one example and many people's cases have different details and different circumstances, but the point is that when the system, the state, local government, the court system, planning office, etc etc has made huge errors of judgement, then the  person wronged by them should not have to spend a small fortune and many years trying to get justice from their mistakes.

I agree loss action should be taken if that is the only solution, but what chance of justice without more legal costs, and in a reasonable time?

Hi Maria

We echo what Goodstitch says, but also, we recently contacted our solicitor to ask about taking action against the agent for failing to supply the Bank Guarantee. We have had a reply today saying that the only people who can be held responsible are the builders, not the agent. We also quoted Bank law 57/68 in our e mail, which we believed covers builders, agents and solicitors too. Which is correct please?

Many thanks for all your advice on this forum.

Lin and Tez Mayne

It's a perpetuating disgrace that no timescale limits are placed upon the courts to respond to the scenario described so painfully well by Goodstich. If the courts responded within a reasonable timeframe to first instance judgements and enforcement orders then many of these instances of injustice would be eradicated and the errant developers, banks, lawyers, whoever, would be made far more accountable for their malpractice, breach of contract etc.

As it stands it's a highly risky , expensive, unpredicatable, unaccepably lengthy and very stressful route to justice- if justice is ever achieved that is.

The justice system will continue to be ineffective and result in ever increasing "effective losses" as Maria describes, so long as these delays are allowed to continue. As Goodstich so rightly implies, why should you have to become "an effective loss" when there is supposed to be a justice system there to protect you in  advance of this scenario?

Goodstitch,

Of course you are right to continue to reinforce the failings that are clearly apparent in the Spanish Legal system where a simple, straight forward case you had against your developer becomes stuck in a Bureaucratic Nightmare for all those years!!!

Obtaining Justice or a reasonable settlement through court action appears to be a Lottery in Spain.  6 individual Breach of Contract cases brought against the same developer that went through through the Cordoba Courts 2/3 yeras ago were lost by investors whose lawyers advised them that their cases were very very strong. Long delays plus quality and planning issues should have resulted in a positive result?

Every case was lost and one of the lawyers expressed his concerns about the cosy relationship that existed between the developer's defence lawyer and the Judge!

"Maria" also represented an investor in one of these cases. It would be interesting to learn from Maria why such a solid action could be lost?

Each investor either lost their €130,000k deposits by defaulting and one completed very reluctantly and had to pay their own and the developers legal costs too.

Insult to Injury comes to mind......................

MikeT

In those instances did the investors have a right of appeal, in which case wouldn't that have come before another judge who should have been impartial?

Ads,

There is of course always a right to appeal but with the cases being held in Cordoba where the Developer and their lawyers reside, the investors that I was in touch with, neither had the money, the will or faith in their lawyers to continue with their claim!!

It's a sad reality that taking a full court action in Spain can be a very expensive business and an appeal would involve paying  lawyers fees again with no guarantee of success?

For every case won in Spain, many more are lost. You only have to look through the Court Case results that are listed in the Jurisprudence Public  Domain to see how difficult it can be to win outright in court with "Breach of Contract" claims.

Impartiality, isn't a word that comes to mind when I think about  Court Judgements in Spain, Sadly!

miket

that really is shocking and awful for those you mentioned in the Cordoba courts.  If they had won their cases, I wonder how many of them would have thought that was only half the battle for real justice though?  I wonder how many people (ex-pats included) really understand just what the odds are of getting real justice (as in getting your money back) in Spain should they ever need it?

 Goodstich:

Ask your lawyer to  try this action as part of the "help package" ( no more extra fees or jusr simbolic one).  Maybe the organisation of an effective group action will also help.

We are offering this to our clients as we understand:

1) There is still no Case law to back the action ( of course Law and the opinion of a high class specialist) has been deeply checked). No ones has tried this action before

2) People has alerady spent lots of money on lawyers fees.

The good news today are:  http://www.eyeonspain.com/blogs/costaluz/3077/spanish-supreme-court-beats-banks.aspx 

Miket: You refer to cases against Grupo GPS in Cordoba? As explained, Cordoba jurisdiction has already ( even unfairly and wrongly) stablished a solution for these cases. But we are still on the battle on behalf of these clients, as you may know.

Ads: The try is fistly done on the bais of contract cancellation for contract breaches. The lack of solvency of developers make clear that the lack of Bank Guarantee is a definitive unprotection for the client as just havoing this, would have saved them from the reality of facing a Court decission against an unsolvent company. Then is when we can clearly expose a loss and a need for compensation.

Tezmayne: If you used a lawyer for the purchase, he was risponsable of getting a Bank Guarantee for you, unless he can prove he did eveything and the developer refused. In this case, according to 1.2 of Law 57/68, the Bank is also liable for the lack of the same.

Goodstich: If the action is against conveyancers who did not secure on the existence of the Bank Guarantee, the Insurance company pays. If the action is against the Bank, the Bank pays. In both cases I cannot see an out of court settlement. They will try to fight it in Courts.

 Dear All,

so what advice would you give  70+ pensioners who have "lost" the majority of their life savings through corrupt lawyers who signed a contract without confirming mortgage finance was available, just the word of the developer and agent?

Goodstitch has youth and income to risk, but we have little left to risk, should we increase our home mortgage to fight this?

Even he seems to have decided against further action.

So we need "no win no fee" as I see it, or perhaps a mask and a gun.

Regards

Norman

Maria,

My question for you to comment on was "How could such a Solid Case" be lost in a full court trial?

You took my friends case to the Cordoba Court after 5 similar cases had been lost in the same Court before your case was heard?

Its probably unfair to ask you to comment about a case that is still waiting to go through the appeal court BUT you must have been aware that 5 cases had been lost previously based largely on the same evidence that you would "I presume" have submitted?

Hello to all, I too have been following the 'Rough Justice' thread and cannot believe the timescales involved in actually getting justice. It is now nearly 12 months since the judge granted in our favour to get our deposit back, plus interest, plus legal fees.  I thought with this the judge would also give permission to access the developers bank account and assets if the refund was not forthcoming.  But we are told that because yet again the developer has ignored all communications from the court we now have to wait for this to go back to court for another judgement to access his funds. 

I cannot believe that this could take so long for the judge simply to check details and sign a form, but one year on I am reading about other members having waited for several years and in the meantime the developers going bus.  I feel like we will never see  justice or our money again. We put our deposit on a property in 2006 the property was finished then, and now four years on we are still waiting for justice while the house and many others on the estate stands empty and neglected.

I only hope we live long enough to see justice done so that at least our children will be able to gain some benefit from our foolish dream of a Spanish home.

Totally disillusioned.

 MikeT:

When we took the case to Court there was no Appeal Court Decission in Cordoba, so there was no precedent to apply.

Yes, we check on  provintial Case Law before taking every specific case to the Tribunals. The confrmation by the Cordoba appeal Court came later  and therefore we just appealed on costs and won. This way we kept the client in the same situation he was before proceeding to Courts.

I understand we were prudent and acted correctly.

Best,

Maria

Thanks for your reply Maria,

My question for you was "How could such a Solid Case" be lost in a full court trial? not that you managed to win an appeal against your client from having to pay the developers legal charges?

This thread is about Rough Justice in Spain and you are probably one of the most experienced lawyers we know who can comment about why the legal system can be so unfair!!!

Mike:

What solid case are you refering to? The case we lost in Cordoba?

Thanks,

Maria

Ups... I answered through my brother´s private place. Last post in the threas is actually mine. Sorry about this.

We were checking on entries to his blogpost on the Osborne bull. By the way... if you want to read it... click here