Kent Law Clinic has helped a couple win damages after their landlord neglected to repair their faulty water heater.<\/p>\n
Law Clinic solicitor\u00a0Vivien Gambling<\/a>\u00a0represented the couple,\u00a0Mr Mark Manser and Mrs Sarah Manser, in a civil case at Canterbury County Court.<\/p>\n Landlord Mrs Judith Wilson had issued a claim in the court alleging damage to the property including \u2018water damage\u2019.\u00a0Mr and Mrs Manser, represented by Vivien Gambling, counterclaimed against Mrs Wilson alleging breach of repairing obligations.<\/p>\n The central issue for the judge to decide was whether the water damage was caused by \u2018tampering\u2019 by Mr and Mrs Manser, as alleged by Mrs Wilson,\u00a0or by a lack of proper repair.<\/p>\n The judge\u00a0found no evidence that Mr and Mrs Manser were responsible for the leaks\u00a0and concluded that Mrs Wilson should have had the water damage \u2013 which caused a ceiling to collapse \u2013 repaired as soon as reasonably practical. Damages were awarded for the conditions that the family had endured.\u00a0The judge took into account that the lack of hot water and heating was particularly difficult for Mr Manser, who is disabled.<\/p>\n In another parallel action, brought by Ashford Borough Council,\u00a0Mrs Wilson was prosecuted as the Council\u00a0sought to recover its costs for repairs and enforcement. Mr and Mrs Manser gave evidence in this case.<\/p>\n On 7 November Mrs Wilson was found guilty of the offence of failing to comply with a statutory notice. In delivering his judgment, the judge said that Mr Fergus Wilson and Mrs Wilson had every opportunity to resolve the issues but\u00a0Mr Wilson \u2018stubbornly refused\u2019 to make a commitment to carry out repairs. The failure was \u2018deliberate rather than reckless\u2019.<\/p>\n On 11 December at Folkestone Magistrates Court\u00a0Mrs Wilson was fined \u00a310,000 and ordered to pay Ashford Borough Council\u2019s costs of \u00a314,890.94.<\/a><\/p>\n Mr Manser said: \u2018We are happy with the verdict in the County Court case in which Kent Law Clinic helped us a lot.\u00a0We also thank Ashford Borough Council for its action and are happy that the Wilsons did not get away with their negligence as landlords.\u2019<\/p>\n Vivien Gambling said: \u2018Kent Law Clinic exists to help people like the Mansers, who cannot afford to pay for legal representation,\u00a0obtain justice and I\u2019m delighted that we were able to help them do that in this case.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Reposted from an article by Martin Herrema on the University of Kent’s news pages<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kent Law Clinic has helped a couple win damages after their landlord neglected to repair their faulty water heater. Law Clinic solicitor\u00a0Vivien Gambling\u00a0represented the couple,\u00a0Mr … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38005,"featured_media":527,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[214378,146428,137],"tags":[150367],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":528,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions\/528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}