The builder did the work badly and will not come back: what the law says in 7 jurisdictions
Cracked tiles, a leaking bathroom, a builder who has stopped answering. Italy, France, Germany and Spain all give the owner a right to have it done again and a long guarantee on structural work — but only Germany lets you take the money up front. England, California and New York have no code answer.
The problem
The firm that redid the bathroom laid the tiles badly, the waterproofing leaks and water is now going through to the flat below. Almost the whole price has been paid and the builder has stopped answering the phone. The owner wants to know whether he can force the firm back, whether he can get another firm in and send the first one the bill, and whether he can simply have his money back.
What they agree on
Four of the seven jurisdictions answer this out of their civil code, and they share a structure. The first shared feature is that the builder owes a result, not an effort. German § 633 makes the point most explicitly — the work is free of defects if it has the agreed quality, failing that if it is fit for the use presupposed by the contract, failing that for the ordinary use — and the German page draws the consequence: a bathroom that has to be watertight 'ist nicht dicht, weil sauber gearbeitet wurde, sondern weil es dicht ist'. Work done impeccably to the rules of the trade that does not achieve the agreed purpose is still defective. Italy's art. 1667 makes the contractor answerable for 'le difformita e i vizi dell'opera'; France's art. 1792 makes any builder liable 'de plein droit'; Spain's art. 1591 makes the contractor answer for 'vicios de la construccion'.
The second shared feature is that putting it right comes before getting money back. In Germany the order is written into the statute: § 634 lists the rights, and almost all of them presuppose that the contractor was first given a reasonable period to cure and failed. In France the garantie de parfait achevement under art. 1792-6 covers 'tous les desordres signales par le maitre de l'ouvrage' in the year after acceptance, and the article organises the repair timetable before it organises anything else. Italy's art. 1667 gives the guarantee and art. 1668 the contents. Spain's remedy is compensation under art. 1591, but the general contract rules stand behind it.
The third is a long guarantee on structural work, and all four have one: ten years from completion in Italy (art. 1669), ten years from acceptance in France (art. 1792-4-1), five years from acceptance for a Bauwerk in Germany (§ 634a(1) no. 2), ten years from completion in Spain (art. 1591). What differs — and it differs enormously — is how quickly the owner has to speak up, what he can do while the builder is silent, and who is on the hook.
Where they part company
| Jurisdiction | What its law does | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Italia | Italy's deadlines are by far the shortest, and there are two sets of them. Art. 1667: notify the contractor within sixty days of discovery on pain of forfeiture, and the action prescribes two years from delivery. Art. 1669, for serious defects in buildings: the problem must appear within ten years of completion, notice must be given within one year of discovery, and the right prescribes one year from that notice. | The ten-year figure is the one everyone remembers and it is the one that misleads. As the Italian page says, someone who finds a crack in the ninth year does not have ten years — he has one, from discovery. Sixty days and eight-day-style forfeiture periods have no counterpart in France, Germany or Spain, and they run from discovery, not from the end of the works. Notice in writing, immediately, is the practical answer, and the timing of 'discovery' is exactly the kind of fact to take to a lawyer in Italy. |
| Italy's long guarantee runs in favour of successors in title. Art. 1669 makes the contractor liable 'nei confronti del committente e dei suoi aventi causa'. | Someone who buys a recently built flat and finds serious defects can claim against the builder directly, without needing a contract with him. France reaches the same result on the face of art. 1792, which names 'le maitre ou l'acquereur de l'ouvrage'. That is a right the buyer of an existing home in the three common-law sections does not have from any statute. | |
| France | France separates the two guarantees by gravity, and only one of them requires gravity at all. The decennale of art. 1792 catches damage that compromises the solidity of the work or renders it unfit for its purpose, with the builder liable 'de plein droit' and escaping only by proving 'une cause etrangere'. The garantie de parfait achevement of art. 1792-6 covers, for one year from acceptance, every disorder the owner notifies — 'peu importe leur gravite', as the French page puts it. | A badly laid tile is not a decennale case; it is a parfait achevement case, and the difference is a year rather than ten. The other pivot is the reception: art. 1792-6 defines it as the act by which the owner declares acceptance with or without reservations, and it is the event from which every legal guarantee runs. In France the minutes of the reception are the single most important document in the file. |
| The French escape clause is narrower than any other in the group. Art. 1792 relieves the builder only if 'le constructeur prouve que les dommages proviennent d'une cause etrangere' — and the burden is on him. | Compare Spain, where art. 1591 requires the claimant to establish that the ruin came from vicios de la construccion, or from the soil or the supervision, and to attribute it to the right professional. In France the owner proves the disorder and its gravity; in Spain he proves the cause and its author. That is a very different evidential exercise on the same leaking roof. | |
| Deutschland | Germany is the only one of the four that lets the owner take the money before spending it. § 637(1) allows self-remedy after a reasonable period for cure has passed without result, and § 637(3) adds: 'Der Besteller kann von dem Unternehmer fuer die zur Beseitigung des Mangels erforderlichen Aufwendungen Vorschuss verlangen.' An advance, not a reimbursement. | This is the difference that decides whether an unfinished building gets finished. Everywhere else the owner has to fund the second firm himself and then sue for the money. In Germany he can demand it in advance, and — as the German page notes — combined with withholding the unpaid balance this is often the only way to complete the works at all. The advance is earmarked and has to be accounted for, with anything unspent returned. |
| The price of that right is a strict sequence. § 634 makes almost every remedy conditional on a reasonable deadline for cure having been set and having expired; § 637(2) excuses the deadline only where cure has failed or is unreasonable to expect. Instruct another firm without going through that step and, as the § 634 page puts it, 'verliert regelmaessig den Aufwendungsersatz'. And § 640(3) removes rights 1 to 3 from an owner who accepts work knowing of the defect without reserving his position. | The most expensive mistake in German building disputes is procedural, not substantive: a real defect, a real loss, and no reimbursement because the original contractor was never formally given a chance to put it right. The French garantie de parfait achevement reaches a similar rule from the other direction — art. 1792-6 permits substitute works 'apres mise en demeure restee infructueuse'. | |
| Germany's limitation periods for building work are the shortest of the four for structures — five years for a Bauwerk under § 634a(1) no. 2, two years for other work — but they restart on a different basis where the contractor concealed the defect. § 634a(3) switches those claims to the regular period, which under §§ 195 and 199 runs three years from the end of the year in which the owner learned of the claim, and never expires before the five-year building period. | Concealment does not merely extend the clock in Germany, it changes which clock is running, and it can produce a longer effective period than the ordinary one. Italy has the mirror image: art. 1667 removes the sixty-day notice requirement entirely where the contractor acknowledged or concealed the defects. | |
| España | Spain is the only one of the four that names the architect separately and gives each professional a different trigger. Art. 1591 makes the contractor liable for ruin from vicios de la construccion within ten years of completion, and the supervising architect liable for the same period but only 'si se debe la ruina a vicio del suelo o de la direccion'. A second, longer period follows: where the cause was the contractor's departure from the terms of the contract, 'la accion de indemnizacion durara quince anos'. | The split means a Spanish claimant has to decide who to sue for what before the limitation clock runs out, and the fifteen-year contractual limb is routinely overlooked. There is a further trap that the Spanish page flags: for buildings whose licence was applied for after the Ley de Ordenacion de la Edificacion of 1999, art. 1591 is not the applicable regime at all — that law is, with its own periods of ten, three and one year. Which regime governs a particular building is the first question, and it is one for a Spanish lawyer. |
| United Kingdom | The three English-language sections have no code answer to a botched bathroom. In England the specialist statutes — the Defective Premises Act 1972 and the Building Act 1984 — are outside this corpus, and the ordinary claim is for breach of contract at common law. California has a construction-defect regime at Civ. Code §§ 895 to 945.5, which has no pages here; the lookup fell back on rescission (§§ 1689, 1691) and the general damages measure (§ 3333). New York produced GOL § 5-322.1, which voids indemnity clauses in construction contracts — a real provision, and an answer to a different question. | The remedy the four codes give first — have it done again — is not the common law's instinct, which is damages. An English or American owner asking 'can I make him come back and fix it' is asking for specific performance, which is discretionary and rarely ordered for building work; the practical answer is usually 'get someone else and sue for the cost'. That is precisely the outcome § 637 BGB pre-funds and art. 1792-6 formalises. |
The provision in each country
Each card links to the page that reproduces the official text and explains it in that country's own language.
Italia Codice Civile
- Art. 1667 Codice Civile The contractor guarantees the work against departures and defects; the owner must notify within sixty days of discovery and sue within two years of delivery.
- Art. 1669 Codice Civile For buildings, ruin or serious defects appearing within ten years of completion make the contractor liable to the owner and to later purchasers — subject to one year to notify and one year to sue.
France Code civil
- Art. 1792 Code civil Any builder is liable as of right for damage compromising the solidity of the work or making it unfit for its purpose, unless he proves an external cause.
- Art. 1792-6 Code civil Acceptance is the act that starts every guarantee; for one year afterwards the builder must repair every disorder notified, and after an unheeded formal demand the works may be done at his cost and risk.
Deutschland BGB
- § 633 BGB The contractor owes work free of defects, measured first against the agreed quality and then against the contractual and ordinary use.
- § 634 BGB The owner's four rights on a defective work: cure, self-remedy with reimbursement, rescission or price reduction, and damages — most of them only after a failed deadline for cure.
- § 637 BGB After a fruitless deadline the owner may have the defect removed by someone else, recover the necessary expenditure, and demand it as an advance.
Where there is no answer in the code
A jurisdiction listed here is a finding, not a gap. Either its answer lives outside the corpus — special legislation, case law, municipal rules — or its law simply has no such rule.
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United Kingdom
In law we don't carry
Defective Premises Act 1972
The Defective Premises Act 1972 and the Building Act 1984 are not in this corpus, and outside them a botched bathroom in England is an ordinary breach-of-contract claim developed by the courts rather than a code guarantee. The lookup returned nothing from the Acts the corpus does hold.
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California
In law we don't carry
Civ. Code §§ 895-945.5
California does have a construction-defect statute — Civ. Code §§ 895 to 945.5, the SB 800 regime — but it has no pages in this section, so there is nothing here to link to. The lookup instead offered rescission under §§ 1689 and 1691 and the damages measure at § 3333, which are general contract law and not a builder's guarantee.
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New York
The courts answer it
Breach of contract
New York has no construction-defect statute among these pages. The lookup found GOL § 5-322.1, which voids indemnity clauses in construction contracts. It is a real and useful section, and it answers a different question: who bears the risk between the parties to a building contract, not what an owner may demand when the work is bad.
That's the law in seven places. Now let's settle your problem.
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This page compares provisions of several legal systems in general terms and links to the official text of each. It is not legal advice, it does not tell you which country's law governs your situation, and it takes no account of the circumstances of your case. For a live dispute, consult a qualified lawyer in the jurisdiction concerned.