Ramat Gan tenant wins suit over facade billboard that blocked light, air

It's become all the rage to finance facade renovations of buildings by agreeing to have gigantic advertisements placed on the exterior wall. But there may be an unexpected price to pay, for the tenants' associations (va'ad bayit) whom agree to hang the ads on the building, and for ad agencies as well.

The tenants' association of an apartment building has been ordered to compensate a tenant NIS 30,000 after agreeing to have a giant ad on the building's front that blocked sunlight from entering his home.

The plaintiff rents an apartment on Bialik Street in Ramat Gan. To help finance a renovation of the building's facade, the association agreed to hang a large billboard made by the advertising agency Guy Baram.

However, the tenant argued through the law offices of Carmi Bustanai that he hadn't granted his consent to the placement of the advertisement, nor had he signed an agreement with Baram Original Advertising.

The tenants' association and Baram Original Advertising had signed a 12-month agreement with an extension option in 2002. In practice the ads were to stay on the building for 52 months. Throughout that whole time, they covered the tenant's windows, he claimed before Tel Aviv District Court Judge Mordehai Ben-Haim.

The plaintiff also claimed that the renovation could have been finished in less time than the 10 months it took.

In its defense, the association argued that the building had been neglected. Its facade needed to be fixed up and the revenue from the advertising agency had covered the cost. The works took longer than expected because the dilapidation of the building had been more advanced than originally estimated, the group claimed.

As for the advertisements, they had been installed on a network of ventilators that transmitted the equivalent of 70% of the air and light the apartments would have received if the ads hadn't been there, the committee said.

Ben-Haim found for the plaintiff, though only partially. He decided that the renovation works could have been done in 12 months.

"One can't ignore the protracted nuisance in that much of the air and light, and the view, was blocked by the advertisement nets from the plaintiff's apartment," he wrote.

The reason the ads stayed on the building so long is because the renovations dragged on and on - which was because of the tenants' association's desire to have the ad agency pay the bill for the works, the judge said.

However, he rejected the original claim of NIS 250,000 as excessive and ruled that the association pay the tenant NIS 30,000, plus NIS 5,000 in legal costs.