A judge ordered a refund for a billionaire couple who paid £32.5 million (about $40 million) for a mansion with a “severe moth infestation.”
A UK High Court judge ruled that Iya Patarkatsishvili, daughter of the Georgian billionaire tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili, and her husband Yevhen Hunyak, can hand the home back to the seller, the property developer William Woodward-Fisher.
Patarkatsishvili and Hunyak purchased Horbury Villa in Notting Hill, west London, in May 2019. However, the judgment states that within days of moving in, they started noticing moths flying around and landing on their cutlery.
The couple found moths in clothes, wine glasses, and toothbrushes and swatted away hundreds a day, the judgment stated.
Pest control companies found that insulation in the ceiling was the source of the issue. The works to replace the insulation cost £270,000, the hearing heard.
The claimants accused Woodward-Fisher of knowingly selling the house with the moth infestation. He was found to have known about the issue since early 2018 but failed to inform Patarkatsishvili and Hunyak.
Woodward-Fisher told the court he had been informed that moths were not vermin and “therefore not relevant to this inquiry.”
The judge ruled that Patarkatsishvili and Hunyak should be refunded much of the house’s cost, minus £6 million for the time they lived there, plus substantial damages. Woodward-Fisher was ordered to pay the couple £4 million in damages, including £15,000 for their moth-damaged clothes and £3.7 million they paid in stamp duty.
Chris Webber, an attorney at the firm Squire Patton Boggs who represented Patarkatsishvili and Hunyak, said the couple “hope the case will serve as a warning to unscrupulous property developers who might seek to take advantage of buyer beware to sell properties by concealing known defects,” The Guardian reported.
Patarkatsishvili is a theater director. Her father, who died in the UK in 2008, was once Georgia’s richest man worth $12 billion, per Forbes. Some of his assets passed to Patarkatsishvili.
Woodward-Fisher is a former rower who competed for the UK in the 1970s.
Horbury Villa was built in the mid-1800s and spanned 2,800 sq ft. After being extended, the property covered 11,000 sq ft and featured a pool, spa, cinema and gym in the newly created basement, according to the website of architect Anthony Paine.
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