A property seller cannot necessarily be held responsible for the remediation of a property if contaminated sites are suspected there. This is because it is necessary to check in advance whether the soil is actually contaminated. This has now been decided by the Federal Court of Justice (V ZR 213/21) and therefore referred the case back to the Munich Higher Regional Court (OLG). In this case, a real estate seller (real estate company) had divided a building on a Munich property into individual residential units and started selling them.
However, the real estate company wanted to have an underground parking garage built first, probably in order to achieve higher sales proceeds. It therefore commissioned a soil analysis in advance. This revealed that the soil under the planned underground parking garage was a filled gravel pit that was contaminated with various pollutants. The real estate company then informed the city, initially suspended the sale and excluded liability for the site outside the inner courtyard being free of contaminants in the purchase contracts. It then resumed the sale and informed the buyers about the contamination report for the soil under the planned underground parking garage.
Because the new homeowners' association later wanted to assert possible claims due to the contamination in the inner courtyard and the southern outdoor area, the case first ended up before the regional court, then before the OLG and finally before the BGH. However, the BGH ruled that a so-called official risk assessment must first be carried out before a judgment can be made. In this assessment, it must be examined whether a contaminated site within the meaning of the Federal Soil Protection Act actually exists. The BGH therefore referred the case back to the OLG.
Sources: bundesgerichtshof.de/(AZ: V ZR 213/21)/wavepoint
© Photodune
