On a cheque or official document you write out a sum in words as well as figures, but what happens when they don’t coincide? It can be very expensive.

And very expensive it was for the Almuñécar Town Hall when a contract for the acquisition of a piece of land contained the value of ‘600 euros’ per sq/m in writing and only ’60 euros’ per sq/m in figures.

The incident goes back to 2003 when the Town Hall under Juan Carlos Benavides acquired a piece of land in La Herradura in the Rambla del Espinar, next to the N-340, to build a small sports facility.

The plot contained 2,300 sq/m of land and the deal was that the land would be ceded to public ownership in exchange for urban-development rights on another piece of land belonging to the owner.

Now, the contract had a clause that stipulated that if the change in land category did not take place within three years, then the Town Hall would pay “seiscientos euros (60 euros)” per sq/m, and therein lies the fateful error.

The day before the signing the municipal surveyor valued the plot at 40 euros-sq/m but considered that the land had a potential of 60 euros-sq/m; hence the price. Therefore he calculated that the land was worth 138,000 euros, if the Town Hall had to one day find the cash.

Now, if you miss out or add and extra figure ‘0’ it is a comprehensible mistake, but the wrong figure was written out, which is not just a typographical mistake. Not only that, the same mistake in the same form also appeared on other related documents.

Then came 2010 and Benavides still being the Mayor signed an extension to the original contract with the original owner giving the Town Hall another two years to come up with the land-category change. Again, the 600-euro quantity was repeated.

Then came 2011 and a change in the Mayor’s office and the landowner decides to take the Town Hall to court for her money, 1,292,700 euros! The judge decides in September 2014 that the Town Hall has to pay 600 euros-sq/m… plus interest.

The judge’s finding says that “when the meaning is obscure that obscurity should not favour the party that drew it up,” more or less. Furthermore, when the sum appears both in words and figures, the word version is the one that counts.

As you can imagine, the Town Hall is going to appeal before the Regional Supreme Court (TSJA) and their argument is the following:

The judge’s decision does not take into account that in two separate Plenary Meetings of the Town Council the 60-euro figure is the only one mentioned. The minutes of the meeting were transmitted to the owner and she did not contest it, therefore she consented.

Furthermore, the defence lawyer for the Town Hall asks ironically that if the document had “600 million,” would the public coffers be condemned for decades to find and pay that amount?

Editorial comment: This goes to show that the Law and common sense can be total strangers.

(News: Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)