A property dispute in a shared building in Yokneam ended with a ruling that the owners of two adjacent garden apartments must pay to repair a retaining wall that began to sink and pull away from the building, and must also cover heavy legal costs. The case was decided by land registrar and condominium mediator Yael Leibovich.
The dispute began in 2023, when a couple who had recently bought an apartment discovered the problem during gardening work in their private yard. An engineer they hired found a serious safety hazard and said the wall had to be completely dismantled and rebuilt. The neighbors whose yard also bordered the wall refused to share the costs, arguing that the wall was part of the common property and therefore the responsibility of the building’s homeowners association.
They went further and filed a third-party claim against the condominium committee, insisting the wall was communal and that any defect had nothing to do with them personally. Leibovich rejected that argument, finding that the land in the yards had previously been removed from the common property and assigned to the specific apartments, making the retaining wall private property belonging only to those unit owners. She wrote that a different interpretation would prevent owners with attached yards from planting, cultivating soil, adding a pool, or making any other changes that follow from using a private yard.
The ruling also said the wall’s defects stemmed from improper construction on fill soil, which caused it to separate from the building. The court ordered the refusing owners to carry out the full repair at their own expense. In addition, they were ordered to pay about NIS 24,000 to the neighbors who sued and another NIS 23,000 to the condominium committee, for a total of nearly NIS 47,000 in legal expenses, on top of the repair bill.
