Celebrity manicurist wins £730,000 damp compensation from property tycoon
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
A celebrity manicurist has won £730,000 in compensation and costs for damp issues from a property tycoon who has previously played table tennis with Boris Johnson.
Leighton Denny – whose clients have included Kate Moss, Penelope Cruz, Joan Collins and Shirley Bassey – discovered damp at the £1.3 million house he bought in Chiswick, west London, in 2015.
He sued Kam Babaee, who has been a developer of “luxury property” for 20 years, who oversaw the new-build project and has been pictured at events with Mr Johnson, the former prime minister.
Mr Denny, 49, who was awarded an MBE for services to the nail and beauty industry in 2014, claimed “there was [a] significant defect causing dampness and affecting the property’s fitness for habitation”.
House had ‘fundamental defects’
In his claim, Mr Denny complained that his house had been built with fundamental “defects”.
In April, Judge Richard Pearce awarded Mr Denny £730,000 – consisting of £549,773.90 in damages for the damp, plus £180,000 on account of his court costs bill – from Mr Babaee and his development company K10 Developments Ltd.
In a new judgment this week, he went on to order that part of Mr Babaee’s ultimate costs bill will be assessed on an indemnity basis, increasing the level of his final bill.
Mr Denny initially sued Mr Babaee, who has appeared in TV shows Sally Lindsay’s Posh Sleepover on Channel 5 and Channel 4’s Extraordinary Extensions, as well as his development company and the builders of the house, alleging breach of contract.
But the breach of contract case was dropped and the case against the builders discontinued completely, with the nail tycoon winning a default judgment against Mr Babaee and K10 Developments under the Defective Premises Act 1972.
The pair then faced off in court in April over how much the defects would cost to sort out, with Judge Pearce ultimately awarding him £549,773.90 in damages, as well as £180,000 up front towards a costs bill which was to be assessed.
Claim for costs to be reduced
Mr Babaee then applied for the costs award against him and his company to be reduced, because Mr Denny had changed his claim during the case.
Ruling this week, Judge Pearce said that the nail technician had at one point overstated the cost of rectifying the damp problems, based on an expert report, saying it would cost over £720,000 before revising it down to around £485,000 after getting new expert advice.
The developer argued that led to him blowing money unnecessarily on legal costs as a result.
The judge said Mr Babaee was asking him to decide “whether the claimant’s costs should be reduced to have regard to the fact that the valuation of his claim changed during the course of the proceedings”.
But he rejected the developer’s plea for him “to disallow some of the claimant’s costs,” saying that Mr Babaee had not proved that the temporarily inflated figure had actually led to any extra expenditure on his part.
He went on to order the full costs bill to be met by Mr Babaee and his company, with part of it to be assessed on the “indemnity” basis.
Mr Denny possesses a star-studded client list that includes Kate Moss, Penelope Cruz and Adele.
He built his empire of over 800 appointed salons worldwide and boasts his own line of products – Leighton Denny Expert Nails, Sun-Believable Expert Tan and Lip Dual Expert Makeup.
His products are also currently stocked in 115 Marks & Spencer stores and 32 John Lewis stores around the UK and he is a regular face on the QVC home shopping channel.
K10 group’s website says it is “a bespoke ultra-prime residential developer”.
