An elderly couple has hauled an estate agent and others to court for allegedly misleading them in terms of the Consumer Protection Act (CPA) after a top-storey deck collapsed beneath their feet just months after taking possession of a Marina Da Gama property, in Muizenberg.
The couple is suing the agent and the executor of the late seller’s estate for over R100 000 to have a new deck installed citing alleged misrepresentations on the part of the seller.
They alleged the agent told them that the house was in “stunning” condition and that the property needed virtually no work before they moved in.
Both the executor and the estate agent have denied the allegations.
However, according to lawyers for the couple, the local building inspector allegedly inspected the upper deck, as well as the wooden ground floor deck after the incident and reported that “they were of the most unsafe structures” he had seen in a long time.
“He pointed out evidence that the seller had known about the structural defects in the lower deck, as they had attempted to address this, but that their ‘quick fix’ intervention had rendered the lower deck even more unstable,” said the couple’s lawyer, Trudie Broekmann.
Broekmann said in terms of the CPA, an agent of a seller who breaches the Act by misleading a consumer, is liable to the buyer along with the seller. The Act also requires anyone who markets or sells property to warn the buyer of any hazard that the property may pose, but neither the seller nor the estate agent did so, alleged Broekmann.
Broekmann added that the Act prohibits misleading the buyer, “including by failing to disclose a material fact, or by using exaggeration, innuendo or ambiguity”. Broekmann said sellers and marketers of property are liable for damages if they supply unsafe, hazardous or defective goods, or provide inadequate warnings or instructions to a buyer.
The estate agent, in his plea, admitted “that the wooden deck moved from its original position” but denied that it collapsed.
According to the agent, he “represented the property was in good condition”.
Cape Times
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