Ten years, not twenty-six months. Accepting the appeal filed by the lawyers of the consumer association Adiconsum Sardegna, the Court of Appeal of Cagliari has extended – and by a lot – the limitation periods within which users can request compensation for damages in the event of the supply of non-potable water by Abbanoa.
The case was brought by the lawyer Franco Dore, on behalf of some inhabitants of Castelsardo. The court of Cagliari, in the first instance, had barred their way to access legal protection. The judges of Appeal have established that the right of the same to be able to request compensation for damages expires within ten years from the date on which non-potable water was supplied and not within twenty-six months as had, instead, established the Court considering the water service a consumer good.
This means that the requests submitted through Adiconsum, both by the proponents of the class action and by those who joined the initiative subsequently, will have to be accepted as they are not affected at all by the extinctive effect of the statute of limitations.
In accepting the requests formulated by the lawyer Dore, the Court of Appeal also rejected the appeal proposed by Abbanoa which asked to be declared exempt from any responsibility, as a mere manager of the service, and to unload the same onto Egas and, therefore, the Municipalities and the Region.
On the contrary, the Court, according to Adiconsum, «expressly stated that Abbanoa has failed to comply with the service obligations that weigh on it, having supplied non-potable water and therefore a good unsuitable for the use for which it was intended and has clearly highlighted that “it is part of the duties of the supplying company – the sole counterparty of the user in the supply contract – to ensure the conservation of the goods granted for use through ordinary and extraordinary maintenance interventions on the works inherent to the service».
Furthermore, the Court of Appeal, also in this case modifying the decision taken by the Court of Cagliari, has set, as the calculation criterion for the compensation of the damage suffered by the users, in an equitable manner, the amount of 0.420 euros for each day of lack of supply of drinking water for each member of the family unit served by the single user.
Enrico Fresu