An owner sued Nicosia municipality over a damp, cracked basement under a public passage. The Supreme Court held the cause was the owners' own lack of waterproofing and upkeep.
A building in central Nicosia, put up under a permit issued in 1948, has shops on the ground floor, flats above, a basement workshop, and an arcade through which a private road runs with a right of public passage. The roof of the basement is the road. From 1992 the basement showed damp, mould, corroded concrete and cracks in its slab and retaining walls, and one of the owners spent years blaming the Municipality of Nicosia for the traffic passing overhead. On 25 September 2026 the Supreme Court dismissed his appeal and confirmed that the municipality owed him nothing.
The judgment is useful well beyond one arcade. It shows how a court decides who is responsible for damage to an older building, and how much of that decision turns on the original permit, on a single independent expert, and on what the claimant can prove he owned and when.
The permit set the rules
The 1948 permit treated the basement slab as a bridge. It fixed the design load at a seven-tonne road roller, required at least 25 centimetres of asphalt and base over it, and provided that all the basement work, foundations, walls and reinforced concrete, would be carried out under the municipality's control because the arcade would be used as a road. The owner argued that this made the municipality responsible for the structure and for what passed over it.
The courts read the permit the other way. It placed on the owners the duty to build the basement so that the arcade could be used as a road, and it allowed public use of that road. The permit was never challenged or revoked, so that use could not be prohibited. Yet the owner had closed the road from time to time and, from 2002, permanently. The courts also noted that the regime of 1948 did not oblige owners to connect to a rainwater collection system; that obligation came with regulations in 1972.
One independent expert decided the case
In November 2012 the parties agreed to appoint a civil engineer through the Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber (ETEK) to report on the building. His evidence, together with that of two engineers employed by the municipality, was that the damage came from the owners' failure to waterproof the building from the start and then to maintain it, and from natural deterioration over more than half a century. The owner's own architect, who had reported on the building in 1992, 2005, 2007 and 2012, was found not to have given the court the scientific criteria needed to test his conclusions. He accepted, for example, that a rainwater system was the owner's responsibility from the outset, and then said without explanation that it should have been added later.
The Supreme Court upheld that assessment. The jointly appointed engineer was independent because of the way and the purpose for which both sides had appointed him, and he had kept strictly to his terms of appointment, declining to say who was to blame because that was the court's task. An attempt to suggest that he had been bribed was found to be wholly unsupported.
An expert both sides chose is very hard to argue with afterwards.
The claims in law
Each legal basis failed on the facts. Trespass to immovable property under section 43 of the Civil Wrongs Law, Cap. 148, was not established, because the permit allowed the private road to be used as a public one. Private nuisance under section 46 of Cap. 148 requires conduct that habitually interferes with the reasonable use and enjoyment of another's property and causes damage; here the road had been closed since 2002 and its use was never connected to the damage, which was the owners' own. The claims in negligence and for breach of statutory duty fell with the finding on causation, and the owner could not show that the municipality had ever accepted responsibility or promised to resolve the problem.
There was a further obstacle the owner could not overcome. He became registered owner of three shops and a flat, with exclusive use of the basement, only in February 1997, and of a second flat in 2004. He could not claim for damage that arose before he owned the property, and letters of authority from the other owners did not give him the right to sue and claim damages on their behalf.
What this means in practice
This matters to anyone who owns or is buying a unit in an older building, and in particular a building that carries a road, a passage, a car park or a public right of way over or beside it. It matters also to the management committee of a building with common parts that are visibly deteriorating.
The first lesson is that the permit is a primary document. The conditions attached to an old building permit can decide decades later whose responsibility a structural element is. Before suing anyone, and before buying, get a copy of the permit and its conditions from the authority that issued it.
The second is that maintenance is the owner's duty, and neglect is a defence available to everyone else. Damp, mould and cracking that develop over years will usually be traced first to waterproofing and upkeep. An owner who wants to pin them on a neighbour, a contractor or an authority needs evidence of a specific cause that is not the building's own condition.
The third is about experts. Agreeing to a joint expert through ETEK is often sensible and saves cost, but both sides should expect to live with the report. Before agreeing, settle the questions the expert is to answer, and make sure the documents and history the expert needs are put before him.
The fourth is about who sues. A claim for damage to property belongs to the person who owned it when the damage occurred. Where several owners are affected, each of them should be a party in his own name, and a buyer who inherits a long-running problem should not assume he also inherits the seller's claim. Our property practice advises on older buildings, common parts and the documents that decide responsibility, and our litigation team handles the claims when they cannot be settled.
Sources
- Takis Andreou v. Municipality of Nicosia, Civil Appeal 411/2017, Supreme Court of Cyprus, 25 September 2026
- The Civil Wrongs Law, Cap. 148, CyLaw
This article is provided for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
Klitos Platis
Advocate, Partner
Kleanthous & Platis LLC, Nicosia · Published 1 October 2026
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