The Regional Supreme Court (TSJA) has found the City Hall of Granada guilty of failing to protect a local from decibel contamination. Put another way, the Council did not act against a pub that was making the neighbours’ lives unbearable.
Consequently, the City Council has to compensate the said family 48,000 euros… but wait – they were originally looking at a massive fine of 455,708 euros, so only having to pay out a 10th of that originally whammy is cause to break out a party hat and farting cushions in a round of wanton jubilation, indeed.
It has taken a long time for this case to reach a conclusion because it started back in 2001 – almost last century *Gasp!* The neighbours of this noisy bar filed a complaint, pointing out that this establishment did not even have a bar licence, yet it continued to operate without one for the next four years. Neither did the bar have proper noise insulation. Piffling details!
Despite these deficiencies, the bar throbbed on for a total of eight years without the City Council doing anything about it.
The City Council not only considered the original compensation sum disproportionate – who would disagree with them – but they said that if anybody had to hand over compensation, it should be the owners of the bar.
Then came 2009 and the provincial law court found in favour of the ‘suffering neighbours (a young couple with two young kids) and ordered the City Hall to cough up nearly half a million euros in compensation. The judge reminded the City Council that not once did they respond to the couple’s written complaints, preferring to fall back on the time-honoured tactic of ‘administrative silence.’
The City Hall decided to appeal against the finding and took the case to the Regional Supreme Court, who handed down a sentence that cannot be appealed against, ordering the Council to pay considerably less, but pay out, all the same.
The Supreme Court considered the action taken by the Council against the pub had been “luke warm and useless, verging on complete inactivity.”
Editorial Comment: unfortunately, the 48,000 euros will be paid for by the city tax payers via the municipal coffers, whilst the “luke warm and useless” City Hall councillors and clerks that should have acted will not have to pay a centime out of their own pockets.
Logically, these incompetent bureaucrats should be turned inside out, their orifices bunged and their worthless hides inflated and set adrift over the cities skyline as a warning… or is that a bit steep?