“I’m going to check that,” says lawyer Frank Ringnalda. With fast pass, he walks to the other side of the fifth floor of the court. There his client Agnes Zuiker is nervous to pick her nails. After a short bilateral he rushed back to the other lawyers.
It looks like the dots on the i, the elaboration of the details of a settlement. You can safely call that this is being discussed at all. For years, Zuiker and her neighbor Fleur Welter have been in conflict with the companies Rappange and Dewbell, respectively the landlord and owner of their rental houses on Admiraal de Ruyterweg in West. In earlier cases the judge was on their side, today the appeal serves. But if the parties agree, it doesn’t have to come to a statement. Will it work?
“Nothing rather”
The parties seem to send it. In the courtroom, Fleur Welter had said that she would like ‘nothing more’ than to come out today. And so legs lawyers back and forth between their client, then one again and then the other lawyer. Eventually the four of them together. And just before the messenger she calls in, they are out.
What’s the matter? In short: Agnes Zuiker and Fleur Welter rented to the Admiraal de Ruyterweg for a long time. But their houses are sagging, and that will get worse if the foundation is not tackled. Preferably, Rappange and Dewbell want to demolish the building and build new apartments in the place. But the tenants don’t just want to leave. Attempts to get out of it together run nothing for a long time.
Disfigured proportions
Zuiker and Welten feel powerless. Their lawyers give examples of what the tenants experience as harassment on the part of Dewbell and Rappange. With repair work, it would have been waited for so long that the landlord and owner could then claim that the building had fallen so much – ‘destroyed’, their lawyers call it – that refurbishing could no longer be done. And Shurgard, the company where the things of the tenants were stored, was not always paid. If the tenants wanted to go to their things, they could not access their lawyers according to overdue payments.
All in all, the atmosphere between the parties is well ruined. And that it would still come to a settlement today was not a foregone conclusion for a long time. The chairman of the court in particular saw the lawyers of the landlord Rappange and owner Dewbell for a long time. Did it really have to be decided until an extraordinary deportation of the tenants? Were the other routes really exhausted? Was foundation and full recovery of the building really unreasonably expensive? It leads to the fans of tenants Zuiker and Welten, in large numbers present, which has been stunned during the case.
Suspension
And then Judge Toorman sighs deeply. “I wonder if you are not bringing together,” he says. Maarten Driessen, director of Dewbell, cannot resist pouring: “That is very sad, but that is actually three years late.” It will be on the scorn of the tenants and their fan clubs.
After the suspension, which lasts an hour longer than planned, everyone is called inside. And indeed: they are out. Fleur Welter leaves and gets a sum of money. Exactly how much, she does not want to say, but that it is a substantial amount is certain. Agnes Zuiker returns to the Admiraal de Ruyterweg, when the new building is completed. This is expected to take another year or two.
When the courtroom is outside, the fatigue and disbelief can be read on their faces. It’s over, still unexpectedly. But they are satisfied. They can pick up their lives again.
And whether the landlord and the owner are so happy? Dewbell director Maarten Driessen laughs at that question. “Do I have a choice then?”