A court has ruled that developers owe millionaire motivational speaker Alex MacPhail, 55, £530,000 after the house they built was the subject of a court case surrounding a “land grab”.
MacPhail, a former city trader, had his £4 million house built between 2015 and 2018 as part of a development in scheme in Wandsworth Common to replace a WW2-damaged block of flats.
Yet, it became apparent that the cellar of the property encroached the boundary between MacPhail’s house and that of his neighbours, Tom Gueterbock and his wife, by around 18 inches.
The couple sued MacPhail, and he was forced to pay £237,000 in damages and costs, £12,000 in remedial work, and £283,000 in legal costs.
MacPhail subsequently said the insurers of the developers who built his home, Henderson Court Ltd, should cover his losses as they should not have built the extension when they did not have permission to do so.
Judge Nicholas Parfitt ruled that the developers’ insurers should indeed cover the costs of MacPhail:
“[Henderson Court Ltd] acted without the skill and care to be expected of a reasonable contractor, [and did not build the property] in a good and workmanlike manner”.
