The story
A condominium owner challenged a condominium resolution which concerned the works to resolve water infiltrations, including work on a well and the closing of a trap door in the common garden. The resolution had been voted by three out of four condominium owners, including the actress, and provided that the expenses were divided according to general table A. However, the owner contested both the legitimacy of the resolution and the method of apportioning the costs, arguing that the pit collected private waste and only one condominium waste, and that therefore the expenses had to be divided among those who actually contributed to the emissions.
Once the mediation was concluded without an agreement, the actress sued the condominium, requesting the annulment of the resolution, a different distribution of expenses based on the actual use of the facilities, and reimbursement of the legal costs incurred. The condominium defended itself by arguing that, since these were common systems, the related costs had been correctly divided, pursuant to art. 1123 cc, paragraph 1, according to the thousandth values of the properties of the condominiums. The defendant added that, “as ascertained by the technician appointed by the condominiums with the report filed in the documents”the majority of water supplied to the waste pipe in question came from parts of condominium property, with the consequence that it was appropriate to divide the expense according to Table A/General.
The decision
The Court found the plaintiff wrong, underlining the condominium nature of the well according to the provisions of Article 1117 of the Civil Code, according to which the water and sewage systems are the subject of common property. As the judge observed, it emerged that the well under discussion served all the real estate units of the condominium, since it collected both the water coming from a common good (the collection tank for the irrigation of the condominium garden), and the discharges of the individual properties. Consequently, the Court specified that the maintenance and repair costs of said property must be divided according to thousandth values, without there being any legitimate possibility of having different distribution criteria (unless agreed upon by contractual regulation) which take into account the number of entries (with equal distribution between the condominium and the private pipes entering the sump) or which are commensurate with the volume of water introduced into the pipe.
The condominium owner’s request was rejected because she had incorrectly asked to pay less for the work on the sump, claiming that her share should be calculated only on the basis of the water coming from the condominium system. According to the actress, the rest of the expense had to be divided among the other condominiums, based on the number of drains that flow into the sump. However, this interpretation was not accepted, because the plant serves all the units and the distribution must be divided by thousandths, not based on the number of injections (Trib. Naples 2 September 2025 n. 7750).
Concluding considerations
In the case examined, the Court considered that the drain performed a common function, regardless of the fact that some condominium owners also used it for private drainage, via their own pipelines connected to the structure. Although some use a common facility more intensively, the asset still remains shared.
At first glance, the decision might seem unfair, because it requires all condominium owners to contribute to the maintenance costs of a system which, in practice, is exploited to a greater extent only by some. It must always be considered that, based on Article 1102 of the Civil Code, each condominium owner can make particular and/or more intense use of the property or condominium facility. The most intense use occurs when the individual condominium owner derives from the common part/system greater and additional utilities, even different, compared to the benefits that, in general, can derive from all the other condominium owners, but always in strict compliance with the two fundamental limits consisting in the prohibition of altering the destination of the common property and the prohibition of preventing the other participants from equally using it according to their rights.
