Wednesday 19 January 2011

Still on with the stair case

I spent some time yesterday collating paperwork (me too Jen).

We are trying to take the man who made our staircase to court to get some money back because it was badly made and we paid a lot of money for it.

We are now at the stage of having appointed a solicitor who has prepared a dossier, sent it to him and summoned him to court. It has been scheduled 3 times and postponed. The last time he sent his dossier to our solicitor on the day before the hearing.

On Friday we have a meeting with our solicitor to see what we want to do about his dossier and there is another court session arranged for 3rd February.

As far as I can see we have letters that prove him wrong on every point he makes. We have already had meetings with our assessors and his assessors together (to which he didn't turn up although invited). We didn't ever receive a letter he refers to that he says was signed for so that should be interesting.

So I have the file in pristine order with post its so that we can immediately refer to the right one and we'll see how we go.

Fortunately the stair man so pissed off our assessors that they are happy to pay the costs and we have a lovely insurance man who wants to 'get the bastard' and is happy to translate. Otherwise I don't think we'd bother.

Interestingly the stair man has the contract for the woodwork of the new salle des fetes which has just started being built in the village - 300.000 euros worth of salle des fetes!

4 comments:

  1. Good luck....as for the local contract, I take it he lives in the commune and so would have been paying the taxe professionelle which used to fill the commune's coffers before they abolished it.
    We were given a recommendation for a local guy for replacing the front door...by a maire adjoint.... and when his wife heard about it she kicked up as he had made a total bodge job of their staircase.
    Her husband defended himself by saying that it was important to support local business whose taxes came back to the commune.
    She pointed out that no tax whatsoever could compensate for having as drop on the top step like something out of mountaineering....
    We didn't take the chap.

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  2. It all seems so annoyingly unnecessary, doesn't it? I do hope it all gets sorted out on 3rd Feb, I'll keep everything crossed for you.

    I dispatched a fat envelope of receipts and photographs to my solicitor yesterday and have been promised an interim payment to cover our expenses, before the defendent's insurance co officially admit liability, that was a surprise.

    Jx

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  3. Thanks guys. I have no expectation that anything will get sorted out on the 3rd!
    Fly - yes he's part of the commune.
    Juniper - glad you get an interim payment, you must be so out of pocket.

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