When the electrical supply is not for the good
The situation that we wish to share with you relates to landowners allocated for individual housing construction. Our client purchased a disputed plot of land, received permission to build and started building his dream home. When buying a land plot, he studied all title documents and made sure that there were no encumbrances. Everything is clean, construction work can begin.
Two years later, the client, without calculating all costs, applied to the bank for a loan to complete the construction of the house. The loan was approved, but on condition that the grid company gives the prior consent. Moreover, an encumbrance surprisingly appeared in the extract for the site. That is the exclusion zone of the power line. A part of the land plot got into the exclusion zone is half the trouble. But a real problem is that a part of the already built residential building got into it.
The client's appeal to Rosseti about the approval of the construction of the house was simply ignored. Instead of replying, he received a counterproposal to move 5 power transmission lines for a modest 600,000 rubles. Is this legal? What would you advise? Should I pay or sue them? We received a pool of similar censored questions from the frustrated client.
Studying judicial practice on the issue ignited a kind of optimism. We found out that landowners often achieve the protection of their rights in a situation where power transmission lines were built and / or registered later than the date of acquisition of the land plot. And this is just our case!
But we continued to study law enforcement. This category of disputes is filled with many nuances that require further development for subsequent proof in court. For example,
- The reality of the violation of the rights of the landowners. Not all courts consider the encumbrance as an unconditional restriction of the right and require the plaintiff to prove specific negative consequences.
- Technical possibility to transfer power transmission towers. Such evidence can be technical projects, expert opinions, responses of the grid organization, etc.
- Possibility to transfer without violating the rights of third parties. It is impermissible for the protection of the plaintiff's rights to entail a violation of the interests of third parties, for example, adjacent land users.
- Consent of the owners. The owner of the land site may allow the construction on his site to other persons. The presence or absence of consent from the previous owners is considered.
- There are instances of construction violations that have occurred. To do this, it requires analysis to determine if the power transmission line pole corresponds to the initial project, as well as an analysis of compliance with construction standards and rules.
On the other hand, there is still an encumbrance on the land plot, the legality of which is questionable. It potentially restricts the right to own the land plot, affects the selling price of both the land plot itself and the house built on it.
In addition, the direct proximity of power transmission lines to residential buildings can lead to a violation of sanitary standards that establish safety rules. It is necessary to follow them in order to avoid the negative impact of the electromagnetic field of power transmission lines on human health.
By the time our client received a response, he had managed to consolidate with other neighbors on the street who were in the same situation. Considering that the encumbrance occurred for all of them after acquiring a land plot and none of the owners, including the previous ones, gave consent to the construction of the power transmission line. We recommended initiating a collective lawsuit to require Rosseti to move the power line poles through the court. We will file the lawsuit in the next few days. We will provide additional information on the results of its consideration.