The daughter of a Georgian billionaire and her husband who bought a £32m London mansion have won back most of their money after it was found to be infested with moths.
Iya Patarkatsishvili and Dr Yevhen Hunyak bought the seven-bedroom Horbury Villa in Notting Hill in May 2019.
The luxurious pad boasted a pool, spa, library, cinema and even a “snoring room”, aimed at boosting sleep.
But days after the couple moved in, they noticed a problem with clothes moths, which had “caused damage to expensive clothing,” the High Court was told.
They claimed this was due to moths infesting the home’s insulation, which they alleged they were misled about, and sued the seller, William Woodward-Fisher, in a bid to reverse the sale.
The couple had visited the property at least 11 times, with Dr Hunyak telling the court that moths were landing in their children’s toothbrushes.
The couple claimed to be swatting around 100 moths a day at the infestation’s peak, in what was described as a “constant battle to kill and control moths.”
On Monday, High Court judge Mr Justice Fancourt ruled that seller Woodward-Fisher had not properly accounted for the state of the property during the sale when telling the couple that it had not had a problem with vermin.
He said the seller had not tried to deliberately mislead the couple, but that he had “simply wanted to sell the house and move on”, and hoped the “problem had gone away” because he did not want the sale to fall through.
Woodward-Fisher was ordered to reimburse the purchase price, minus £6m to recognise the couple’s use of the property.
He was also told the pay the couple £4m in damages for works carried out to deal with the moths, reimbursed stamp duty and around £15,000 for damaged clothes.
Chris Webber, from Squire Patton Boggs, the firm that represented the couple, said they “hope the case will serve as a warning to unscrupulous property developers who might seek to take advantage of buyer beware to sell properties by concealing known defects.”
The court was told Woodward-Fisher previously bought the home in 2011 before extending it.
Ms Patarkatsishvili is the daughter of Georgian businessman, Badri Patarkatsishvili, who moved to the UK in 2000 after falling out of favour with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. He died of heart failure eight years later.
