DAs part of the ecological transition, public authorities are encouraging individuals to replace their oil boilers or their old gas boilers with heat pumps or inserts. However, since March 21, 2024 (22-18.694), those who decide to do so are less well protected by insurance than before. This results from a reversal of case law by the Court of Cassation, made in the following case.
In November 2012, a company installed an insert in M. and M’s fireplaceme X. On February 13, 2013, a fire destroyed the house. The X are partially compensated (142,610 euros) by their multi-risk insurer home, SwissLife. They are demanding a supplement (79,000 euros) from the installer, who had taken out ten-year insurance (which is not capped), with Axa.
The Axa company refuses to play it. She maintains that an insert placed in a fireplace is only a “element of equipment on the existing”, and no A ” work “the only one likely to benefit from it, under the terms of the Spinetta law of January 4, 1978. She challenges the case law by which the Court of Cassation, on June 15, 2017 (16-19.640), extended the benefit of the ten-year guarantee to existing equipment items.
The Court indeed ruled, with regard to a heat pump which had broken down, that “disorders affecting equipment elements (…)separable or not, original or installed on existing, are subject to ten-year liability when they render the work as a whole unfit for its intended purpose.. She confirmed this position regarding an insert that caused a fire (16-18.120).
Backtracking
The X take legal action. Axa loses at first instance and on appeal, but, before the Court, requests a reversal or, more precisely, a reversal upon reversal. The public prosecutor’s office then launches a consultation (rare procedure) “on the impact of the Court’s case-law on “quasi-works””, with the professionals concerned, and the National Consumer Institute (INC)who answers that individuals “don’t have the reflex” to use the ten-year guarantee.
The craftsmen respond that, since June 2017, despite the criminal sanctions they face, they have not taken out more ten-year insurance than before, because it would cost them too much. They find the obligation to pay for the total reconstruction of a burned house disproportionate, when their interventions only concerned part of it.
You have 33.48% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.