His business is flooded, he is barely compensated seven years later

This is a legal victory which will undoubtedly give a Pâquis trader a leg up. In October 2017, a hydrant with an open valve flooded his grocery store, causing some 350,000 francs in damage, including lost merchandise (2,000 kilos of meat), destroyed electrical appliances and water damage. Seven years later, the Court of First Instance recognized the City’s responsibility in this matter, reports the “Tribune de Genève”. He considers it “highly likely” that the episode was caused by the negligence of a municipal employee. On the contrary, the thesis of a hypothetical passerby who opened the valve did not convince the courts, which qualified it as “a version of the facts imagined by the City of Geneva to exempt itself from all responsibility”. Here is the Municipality condemned to pay 12,000 francs to the man, half for the damages, the rest for his lawyer. Far from the claims of the injured party who, already in 2018, expressed the very complicated situation into which this flood had plunged him.