The Court of Ap­peal has dis­missed an ap­peal brought by home­own­ers Leslie Ann Rahim-Pe­ters and Lar­ry Pe­ters against the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, up­hold­ing a High Court rul­ing that re­ject­ed their neg­li­gence claim for struc­tur­al dam­age to their home.

In its judg­ment de­liv­ered yes­ter­day, the court al­so dis­missed an ap­peal against costs, leav­ing the home­own­ers li­able to pay 50 per cent of the pre­scribed tri­al costs, amount­ing to $48,065.

The ap­peal cen­tred on claims that ex­ca­va­tion work car­ried out by con­trac­tors for the cor­po­ra­tion caused se­vere struc­tur­al dam­age to the fam­i­ly’s home. The home­own­ers ar­gued that in May 2015, con­trac­tors ex­ca­vat­ing an in­vert drain along the north­ern bound­ary of their prop­er­ty caused a sec­tion of the perime­ter wall to col­lapse. They claimed the prop­er­ty was left un­pro­tect­ed and the lat­er re­moval of tem­po­rary steel shoring sheets desta­bilised the land be­neath the house. They claimed the works trig­gered ex­ten­sive struc­tur­al dam­age, in­clud­ing cracks in walls and floors, foun­da­tion is­sues and move­ment with­in the house it­self.

The cor­po­ra­tion ar­gued that while a sec­tion of the bound­ary wall shift­ed dur­ing ex­ca­va­tion works, the wide­spread crack­ing through­out the house ex­ist­ed be­fore. The cor­po­ra­tion al­so ar­gued there was no en­gi­neer­ing or sci­en­tif­ic ba­sis link­ing the wall col­lapse, which oc­curred more than 25 feet from the res­i­dence, to the struc­tur­al de­fects ob­served in the house. It con­tend­ed that is­sues, in­clud­ing poor con­struc­tion, lat­er ad­di­tions to the build­ing, drainage prob­lems, wa­ter re­ten­tion and un­sta­ble back­filled land, con­tributed to the prop­er­ty’s con­di­tion.

The Court of Ap­peal ruled that the home­own­ers failed to prove the re­quired causal con­nec­tion be­tween the ex­ca­va­tion works and the crack­ing through­out the home.

The judges al­so point­ed to sig­nif­i­cant cred­i­bil­i­ty con­cerns in­volv­ing the ev­i­dence of Rahim-Pe­ters.

At tri­al, the High Court had found the Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion neg­li­gent in re­la­tion to the col­lapse of the bound­ary wall it­self, and the cor­po­ra­tion sub­se­quent­ly re­built it at no cost to the own­ers. How­ev­er, that is­sue was not be­fore the Court of Ap­peal, which dealt on­ly with the claim re­lat­ing to dam­age to the house.