A university professor is facing a £180,000 court bill after losing in a lawsuit against his wine dealer neighbour accused of making his £680,000 apartment unsellable.
Prof Daslav Brkic sued wine retailer Douglas Palin as freeholder of the Victorian house in Finsbury Park, north London, where they both own flats.
The academic claimed his neighbour’s ‘feudal’ attitude had scared off potential purchasers of his apartment, also accusing Mr Palin of being ‘rude, overbearing, confrontational and uncooperative’.
Prof Brkic tried to sell in 2023 but complained that an offer was dropped when Mr Palin unnecessarily informed a buyer of issues the neighbours had.
These included a previous dispute about wooden floors at the flat and another concern relating to whether the academic’s bathroom extension ‘encroached’ on Mr Palin’s property.
Prof Brkic has told Central London County Court that Mr Palin had taken an ‘extraordinarily hierarchical, gloating and somewhat feudal approach’ to his position as freeholder of the Victorian conversion.
Mr Palin is claimed to have asked for ‘overly regular’ inspections while also acting generally ‘unreasonably’, Prof Brkic said.
The professor said the disclosures made by Mr Palin ruined his ability to sell at full value.
University professor Daslav Brkic is pictured outside Central London County Court after a hearing in his dispute with Douglas Palin
Douglas Palin (pictured) won after a judge’s ruling in the case at Central London County Court
He launched a court bid for £80,000 damages, claiming the issues did not need to be revealed because most of them had been resolved.
A bathroom concern was later rectified as a ‘mistake’ on the official plan, he added.
But after a week-long trial, Judge Nigel Gerald has ruled in favour of Mr Palin, who he said had done nothing wrong in flagging up historic and ongoing factual issues at the house to prospective buyers.
The judge said: ‘It is very important for a prospective purchaser to know what they’re buying, what they’re letting themselves in for.’
He said there was no reason why Prof Brkic could not now market and sell his flat as the most serious issues were resolved officially by agreement almost two years ago.
He went on to order the academic – who teaches business studies at Milan University – and his wife Paola Salmoria to pay Mr Palin’s £45,000 legal bills, on top of their own of about £135,000.
The judge made no findings about the behaviour of any of the parties and said he did not doubt that the concerns Mr Palin flagged up with the potential buyer were genuine and ‘honest’.
Central London County Court heard Mr Palin, who works in wine retail, is the freeholder of the Victorian conversion at the heart of the row in Alexandra Grove, Finsbury Park.
The dispute centred over properties in a building in Finsbury Park, north London (pictured)
He lives in an upper floor flat there, with the ground floor and garden apartment sold by a previous tenant to Prof Brkic and his wife in 2013.
After the purchase, the couple began an extensive refurbishment of the flat that became a home for their daughter and son-in-law, though they both visited regularly.
But the work resulted in a series of disputes, with Prof Brkic telling the judge from the witness box that Mr Palin had taken an ‘extraordinarily hierarchical, gloating and somewhat feudal approach’ to his position as freeholder.
He had requested overly regular inspections of the flat and proved to be ‘unreasonable and antagonistic,’ causing them immense stress, Prof Brkic said.
Disagreements with Mr Palin included him taking them to a tribunal in 2021 for a breach of their lease in tearing up carpets, the court heard.
That tribunal then found in favour of Mr Palin in an ‘open and shut’ case, with the couple going on to have the flat re-carpeted to prevent noise nuisance.
Another tribunal hearing took place after Prof Brkic objected to repeated ‘irritating’ inspections, with Mr Palin losing on that occasion, the judge said.
Other complaints included their having torn out Victorian burglar bars from the windows and replacing timber sash windows with UPVC.
Another argument concerned the way the couple’s electricity cables were attached to a fuse box in a communal area.
Floor joists had also been cut into without permission to make pipe conduits, while Mr Palin furthermore criticised the couple for an unsealed door that he said allowed ‘foul’ cooking odours to permeate the common parts of the building.
In 2023, the couple decided to sell and it was during that process that problems with the leasehold plan emerged, seemingly putting their bathroom on Mr Palin’s property.
One potential purchase for £680,000 fell through in early 2023, with another buyer pulling out in August after offering about £640,000.
Blaming Mr Palin for the collapsed second sale, Prof Brkic and his wife sued – claiming that disclosures made by Mr Palin in a Leasehold Property Enquiries form had scared the buyers off.
Their barrister Tom Morris told the judge that, ‘to their horror’, Mr Palin had put forward a ‘litany of complaints’.
That document included mention of the resolved carpet argument, historic disagreements about the windows and burglar bars, and the bathroom issue, which had been a ‘mistake’ on a plan.
Arguing that the answers in the form were a breach of the couple’s right to ‘quiet enjoyment’ of the property, Mr Morris said Mr Palin had been wrong to mention the issues, given that most had been resolved.
Giving evidence, Mr Palin agreed that some of the complaints were resolved before he filled in the document but insisted the issues were genuinely of concern to him.
Replacing historic sash windows in a Victorian property with UPVC could have affected the value of the property as a whole, he told the judge.
Mr Palin said: ‘To have one floor that has UPVC windows is not a good look for the building.
‘It’s been an ongoing dispute between the parties as to whether permission was given or not.’
His barrister Andrew Skelly added that Mr Palin had been ‘entitled, and indeed prudent, to make the disclosures complained of’.
Giving judgment, the judge said Mr Palin had been acting within his rights by saying what he did in the questionnaire, adding: ‘All the LPE does is set out essentially matters of historical fact.
‘There is no suggestion he acted dishonestly or in bad faith, or that in any material respect any of the material provided was misleading.
‘I simply cannot understand how a landlord providing essentially factual information, primarily requested by a prospective purchaser, can be a breach of covenant, how it can in any way interfere with a sale.’
He also rejected Prof Brkic’s case that the contents of the form had resulted in his buyer pulling out, saying there was ‘no sufficient evidence’ to suggest that it was the ‘material or sole cause’.
He said the potential purchasers appeared to have ‘jumped the gun’ and pulled out before even getting Mr Palin’s further comments on the issues.
Prof Brkic and his wife had also themselves failed to mention issues in property and leasehold information documents, known as TA6 and TA7 forms, which they provided to the prospective purchasers, he said.
The judge said: ‘To lay this entirely at the door of Mr Palin based on the LPE1 is, in my judgment, unreal and without foundation.’
And he found that it could not be said that the disclosure of the issues by Mr Palin made the flat unsellable on the open market even now.
By August 2024, all of the issues – other than the cooking odours and the electrical cabling – had been formally resolved.
‘Given that situation, I find it difficult to understand why the property could possibly not be sold’, the judge added.
Having dismissed Prof Brkic’s claim, he ordered the couple to pay Mr Palin’s lawyers’ bill, estimated at £45,000, with £30,000 up front within 28 days.
The court heard their own costs bill comes to £135,000.
