Can the owner’s community throw my dogs off the floor?

The coexistence in a community of owners must respect a series of written rules, both in the statutes and in the same Horizontal Property Law. The rule prohibits neighbours from carrying out activities that are annoying or harmful. To protect peaceful coexistence, it gives the community of owners a legal weapon to bring to justice those neighbours who do not respect a minimum of understanding. Sometimes it is not the owners who cause the inconvenience, but their pets. In this sense, there are sentences that condemn the owners of the animals to cease pet ownership.

Not even the best education given to their pets has prevented justice from condemning a neighbour of Castro Urdiales to cease the possession of her pets.

A recent sentence of the Provincial Court of Cantabria (whose full text can be consulted here) has given the reason to a community of owners who sued a neighbour for the bad smells and unbearable noise of the pets she had in her apartment. The judicial decision obliges the co-owner, owner of five dogs, to evict them.

The rest of the neighbours had protested loud noises and smells, which according to the sentence, exceeded the normal use of private and common elements.

The decision to go to trial was approved in an extraordinary meeting, with the unanimous vote of all the neighbours except the one affected.

The Chamber considered that the disorder caused by noise and dirt caused by the defendant's dogs was not a simple inconvenience that the rest of the owners were forced to endure. To do this, it was enough to hear the testimony of the neighbors who appeared at the trial and verify that there had been a municipal intervention in the home of the owner of the dogs.

Therefore, the court sentenced the neighbor to evict the pet from their home, although the sentence is not final because the affected party can appeal the decision before the Supreme Court.

Cessation action

The Horizontal Property Law foresees a procedure, used by the communities of owners in cases of annoying or unhealthy activities. It is the so-called action of cessation of annoying activities or activities prohibited in the Statutes. Article 7.2 of the current Horizontal Property Law expressly states that "the owner and the occupant of the flat or premises are not allowed to develop in it or in the rest of the property activities prohibited in the statutes, that are harmful to the farm or that contravene the general provisions on annoying, unhealthy, harmful, dangerous or illicit activities ".

For this action to be successful it is necessary that the activity that is wanted to be paralyzed is uncomfortable and annoying for third parties of the property, not enough a small difficulty or disorder; it must also be notorious, that is, public and evident.

It can not be directed against singular or sporadic acts, but rather a certain intensity and continuity is necessary.

The regulation provides for important sanctions, such as the deprivation of the use of the dwelling for a specific period of time.

In the case of the neighbour of Castro Urdiales, although the sentence does not condemn the owner to the eviction or deprivation of the use of the house, she is condemned to the immediate and definitive cessation of the possession of dogs in her apartment, when the seriousness of the discomforts produced.

Credits: elpais.com