This is the story of any conflict between a buyer and a seller that has gone to court, where it has been settled for six years, pending the ruling of a new trial. It is the story, according to one of its protagonists "of a defrauded family that has become a defrauding family", this is how Miguel Ángel Muñoz Moreno and his wife, María Jesús Sánchez Gómez, define the feeling that overwhelms them, although until now, the justice has sided with the construction company.
This couple from Madrid, who now reside in Toledo, decided eight years ago to buy a house in the town of San Bartolomé, specifically on plot No. 8 of Guadarfia and Rubicón street. Miguel Ángel Muñoz bought the house off-plan, still unbuilt, and when it was finished, according to him, he got an unpleasant surprise when he found that the house had many defects and elements were missing that appeared in the plans, "it's like buying a car and they give it to you without wheels" compared Miguel Ángel Muñoz.
According to the buyer's version, the construction company Maraladen S.L. ignored his calls and writings to fix the defects in the house, so he decided to file a complaint in January 2001. To support it, he presented a defect report made by a member of the Official College of Quantity Surveyors and Technical Architects of Lanzarote, in which he detected numerous failures. "Where they said there was going to be a wooden door, they had put a sheet metal one or simply hadn't put it, where they said there was going to be a chimney, that chimney didn't even exist."
In total, Miguel Ángel Muñoz claimed more than 56,000 euros as compensation from Maraladen S.L. once the defects were assessed. In November 2001, despite having delivered 30,000 euros as a deposit for the house, which in total had a price of 149,000 plus the IGIC, Miguel Ángel Muñoz decided not to sign the deeds of the house "because they had neither fixed the defects nor did I even have a certificate of occupancy."
A long lawsuit
For its part, the construction company Maraladen S.L., seeing that Miguel Ángel Muñoz had decided not to continue paying, chose to adhere to a clause in the purchase-sale contract that specified that if the buyer did not make the payment, the developer could demand the termination of the contract and keep 30% of the deposit. So the builder, after trying through notarial requirement to formalize the sale with Miguel Ángel Muñoz by signing the deeds and that he refused to sign them on several occasions, Roberto Tomás Devouassox terminated the deal with the buyer and sold the house at No. 8 Guadarfia and Rubicón street to another company of his property, Leonardo David S.L. in January 2002. "Nothing that this man says is real" explains the builder "everything I have done is clear and transparent".
As specified in one of the judgments issued on account of the lawsuits between buyer and builder, several of these notarial requirements were made when the builder still did not have the certificate of occupancy, as required by the purchase-sale contract. Almost two years later, with the certificate of occupancy in his pocket, Leonardo David S.L. tried again to formalize the sale with the signing of the deeds, but Miguel Ángel Muñoz refused again, so the builder sued Muñoz for breach of the purchase-sale contract.
In December 2004, the Court of First Instance No. 6 of Arrecife issued a judgment that sided with the construction company, among other things, because the defects in the house, according to the court experts, were not such. On the other hand, the quantity surveyor who made the defect report commissioned by Miguel Ángel Muñoz, stated that he had visited the house when "it was not yet finished". The investigating judge in the case did not take into account the lawsuit that Miguel Ángel Muñoz had filed years before claiming more than 56,000 euros in compensation for the defects in the house because she considered that Muñoz did not own the house, that he had not finished paying for it and that he did not have deeds for it.
The judgment resolved the termination of the purchase-sale contract, obliging Leonardo David S.L. to return to Miguel Ángel Muñoz the 21,000 deposit for the house, after the construction company had kept 30% of the money, as specified in the contract. It also condemned Miguel Ángel Muñoz to pay the court costs, but Muñoz appealed the judgment alleging that it had been the construction company that had breached by not fixing the defects in the house, not providing him with the certificate of occupancy as specified in the contract and also, he assured that the house was inhabited by third parties. "One day we called and there was a woman, who according to the builder came to clean the house, but there was an antenna for television and a parabolic, and there was even clothes hanging", explains Miguel Ángel Muñoz. Finally, the appeal was dismissed by the Provincial Court of Las Palmas.
The judge again did not take into account the procedure that was being carried out by court No. 1 of Arrecife as a result of the complaint made by Miguel Ángel Muñoz in 2001, whose trial is pending, presumably at the end of this month of July, six and a half years later.
The construction company returned to the buyer of the house the 21,000 euros of deposit that corresponded to him, but these have not reached the hands of Miguel Ángel Muñoz because, it is with that money that he must pay the costs of the trial that sided with the construction company, which amounts to more than 19,000 euros.
Justice takes its time
Six years after the exchange of writings, calls, complaints and lawsuits between Miguel Ángel Muñoz and the construction company began, and two judgments in between, in addition to confrontations with insults included from one side and the other, the case has not been resolved because the resolution of the trial is still pending as a result of the complaint filed in 2001 by Miguel Ángel Muñoz, who for the moment has invested almost 20,000 euros in judicial proceedings, does not have the house they expected to have and according to Muñoz himself, "I have lost sleep". He feels unprotected because he considers that in the Court they have "turned the tables" in his case in such a way that he affirms that "instead of being victims of a scam, now I am the one who scams".
For his part, Roberto Tomás Devouassox, owner of the construction company assures that he has "been seriously harmed" because after having required the buyer on numerous occasions to formalize the deeds and after having gone through the judicial procedure, he could not sell the house at the time as he did with the remaining houses in the urbanization and feels that Miguel Ángel Muñoz "as the courts do not side with him, wants to tarnish the name of the company".