£45,000 compensation award for Lincolnshire couple, amid month of legal breakthroughs for M1 Legal

M1 Legal winning on all fronts in September 2022

Compensation victories:  individual

September was another monumental month for M1 Legal compensation awards.  

The leading firm of Spanish timeshare lawyers achieved over £462,000 worth of awards for grateful clients, including a couple from Boston in Lincolnshire who not only escaped their membership, but were awarded more than £45,000 in compensation for illegalities in their contract with timeshare giant Onagrup.

Another family from Southport received a 'very welcome' phone call informing them the court had awarded them just under £38,000 for a successful claim against Royal Park Albatros. 

A third couple from Poulton-le-Fylde were granted compensation to the tune of just under £34,000 against Costa Del Sol leviathans Club La Costa (Paradise trading SLU).

In all three cases M1 will also be applying for legal fees and simple interest to be paid in addition to the award itself.

Compensation victories by resort

Of the total £462,869 in awards this month, £323,077 were against just three resorts.

• Club La Costa (CLC) lost nine cases in the Spanish courts to M1 Legal and had a total of £154,842 awarded to their former members
• Anfi had six awards against them, valued at £63,236
• M1 legal scored three victories against Silverpoint, which gave their clients £63,236 between them (an average of £21,079 per recipient)

"CLC, Anfi and Silverpoint issued vast amounts of illegal contracts, and a lot of our work is on behalf of clients who suffered because of these companies," explains Fernando Sansegundo, head of M1 Legal.  "But we challenge many other companies too.  There were very few timeshare companies operating legally in Spain (and elsewhere) during the last couple of decades."

Club La Costa clarification

The cases and victories reported in this article are won in the Spanish courts, although not all CLC cases can be dealt with in Spain.  

Like many timeshare companies, CLC has often disguised their activities by invoicing and contracting from multiple different entities in  different jurisdictions. 

Generally speaking CLC cases are either dealt with in the Spanish courts, or by the UK accountancy firm FRP who are handling the administration of Club La Costa (UK) PLC (including subsidiary companies). M1 Legal has handed over 46 cases (following a detailed legal assessment to determine and qualify the validity of these claims) to the FRP administration in September.

"Even during the action, the client has to be protected against future liabilities such as maintenance fees. Given the timescales and amounts of money involved,errors would be costly, so M1 works right up until enforcement of the award."

Breaking new legal ground

Timeshare companies wrote so many illegal contracts, and for so long that they are now drowning in compensation demands.  "Justice in Spain moves slowly," says Sansegundo.  "But there is no stopping it when it gathers momentum.  The resorts know that they have been living on borrowed time these last twenty years.  And now they are being made to pay."

The biggest resorts have been making ingenious but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to avoid meeting their legal and financial obligations towards their victims.

"One thing that many resorts do is to try and hide behind different company names, or even strings of companies," says Fernando.  "We always track them down, and each time we do it opens the door for a whole new accumulation of claims.

"This month we have 'lifted the veil' on a prominent Canary Islands resort called La Pinta, proving the connection between them and their 'front' companies.  We can now use this evidence for other La Pinta compensation claims.

"We also found a new way to claim against Sunset Beach, which allows us to proceed with another batch of cases direct with their lawyers.”

Want to speak with M1 Legal?

M1 Legal lawyers do not deal with new enquiries as their skills and time are focussed on dealing with the legal work itself.  

Instead the initial approaches are filtered by leading claims firm European Consumer Claims (ECC.)  

Please contact ECC for a free, no obligation consultation on your options regarding timeshare claims or relinquishment