Hi Karen and John,
The court case went as well as could be expected.
We are with Maria and the barrister on the day was Fernando. He was excellent in our opinion.
We were questioned by the barristers for the Insurance company (SGR) and some of us by the bank (BBVA). Mostly questions were to do with the bank guarantee; who we believed was to issue it, who it was with, etc. Were our contracts cancelled, did we have a court order to say they were cancelled.
Mostly questions they knew the answer to, but were trying to confuse us or catch us out. For example we are on the list of creditors and can only be on that list if our contract is cancelled.
As we voted Yes to the creditors agreement the SGR barrister was trying to make out that there was still time to receive this refund. However our barrister said in court there was no way this money was coming back from the developer in July as they do not have any properties sold, so cannot fund returning money to us. This seemed to be an issue with our particular case.
Fernando presented several cases to show how other judges had found in favour of our side and the SGR/BBVA presented some showing the opposite. However theirs were from lower courts.
We started the process of suing the bank in 2011, so it takes time to get to court. I am not in any position to give advice, having made several mistakes with this development. However the best decision we have made so far was to contact Maria at Costa Luz and fight to get what is rightfully ours back.
If you can get several people together it may bring the costs down.
Best of luck with whatever you decide to do
Dave & Tina