A man in Jiangsu, China was left devastated upon seeing his renovated house getting wrecked by a group of renovation workers who apparently worked on the wrong unit.
The matter was later brought to court and the judge eventually ordered that the affected homeowner be compensated for the mishap.
Mix-up
According to ST Headline, the incident occurred in a residential complex in Wuxi City, where the owner of Unit 303 had hired a renovation company to carry out demolition and renovation work.
The workers were instructed by the project foreman to go to the unit and retrieve the key from the unit’s door.
Unfortunately, they failed to realise that they had stopped at the wrong floor, which led them to unit 303.
On top of that, the previous tenant of unit 303 had just vacated the premise and routinely left the key underneath the doormat.
Given the fact that the units were identical and the key was left at the door, the workers thought they had the correct unit and got to work immediately.
When the owner of unit 303 came by the next day, he was shocked to find that his house’s walls, false ceiling, kitchen and bathroom facilities were demolished.
Even the existing furniture and appliances weren’t spared either, with all of them being moved out completely.
Police were immediately called following the shocking discovery.
Final ruling
Following failed mediation attempts between the owners of unit 403 and 303, the matter was eventually brought to a local court.
After hearing the case, the judge found that the workers were directly at fault as they failed to verify the unit number beforehand.
He also held the project foreman responsible for the incident as he didn’t fulfil his on-site management responsibilities, indicating a clear oversight in supervision.
In the end, the owner of unit 303 agreed to lower the compensation claim from RMB20,000 (approx. RM12,000) to RMB11,000 (approx. RM6,600), with the renovation workers and contractor bearing RMB6,000 and RMB5,000 respectively.
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