HOME. Infrastructure has been in poor condition for some time and legal proceedings are being sought to resolve the issue.
The civil trial is present in the Civil Judicial Unit of Loja. They ask for the return of 195 thousand dollars. The case dates back to 2021.
A civil lawsuit has been filed against the adviser of the Municipality of Loja, Diego H., who is accused of gross negligence, in the case of the construction of a house in the Malacatos parish in 2021, which, according to the jurists, the construction professional has acted in a ‘negligent’ manner, altering the approved plans and the design, disobeying the structural recommendations.
Demand
The legal case was denounced by the couple: Jorge E., and his wife María S., who in 2021 hired Diego H. to build a house in the Malacatos parish, and now demand that the professional take responsibility for the work, since after a few years it is completely uninhabitable and abandoned, after the appearance of cracks and damage to the infrastructure.
Through a loan, they paid 95 thousand dollars to the professional to build the work, but they never imagined that the house would become uninhabitable in a short time. “The owners continue to pay more than 700 dollars a month on the loan and the house is useless. The house would not have insurance either, because there are errors in the construction, and not in the environment,” said Álvaro Reyes, lawyer for the damaged couple.
Reyes stated that Diego H., who is now a municipal official, was hired by his clients to build a house at the end of 2020 and mid-2021, but unfortunately this professional would have acted negligently, since he would have altered the plans approved by the municipality and also disobeyed the structural recommendations given by the expert in the matter. “Now the construction (house) is full of fissures and cracks, which is why the Risk Secretariat recommended immediate eviction. According to the experts, there are no water filtration problems and it is not a geological fault either, but rather that it was poorly built, ”he revealed.
Process
The house is uninhabitable, according to the experts who have reviewed the infrastructure, it must be demolished and built again, for which its owners and now injured, request compensation of 195 thousand dollars. After the trial initiated for damages against Diego H., the civil trial is processed in the Civil Judicial Unit of Loja, the complaint has already been qualified and accepted for processing.
Defending
For his part, Diego H., clarified that it is a broad issue, it is nothing new, since he now performs the functions of adviser in the Mayor’s Office of Loja, but from years past, when he provided his services of a private nature.
In 2018, the couple contacted him to design the house when he was in Argentina, then in 2020, they hired him to build it.
From the beginning, it obtained all the permits to build the 153-square-meter house, despite the fact that complementary studies (structural-geological-hydro-sanitary) were not required, all these soil, structural, electrical analyzes were carried out, among others.
The construction began in October 2020 and ended in August 2021. For example, the house has all the studies, including those on the ground, which entered the busiest laboratory in Loja and at the time of construction, small changes were made, such as the morphology of the earthenware, extension of centimeters in some areas, but nothing that influences its construction.
So far, what can be perceived is that a stream of water appeared and that has damaged the infrastructure. “What must be done is a drainage and a retaining wall, but instead of that, now they resort to the legal, so we will proceed to demonstrate our truth,” added Diego.