In a few years, Patrick Diter had transformed a modest bastide of 200 m2, acquired in Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes), into a Renaissance-style palace of 3,000 m2, with swimming pool and heliport, estimated by the tax authorities at 57 million euros. Sentenced, after a judgment by the Court of Cassation, to demolish his “castle” deemed illegal, the owner finally obtained from the administrative court of Nice the reinstatement of his building permit.
Delivered on May 31, the decision essentially recognizes that “the intentional element of the fraud is not characterized” in the building permit application filed in 2006. This decision has the effect of annulling a 2017 decree of the town hall of Grasse which canceled it for fraud, and therefore to restore it.
Only 70% of the buildings concerned
The judgment concerns approximately 70% of the surface built by Patrick Diter, that is to say all the buildings constructed from 2005 and concerned by this regularization permit of 2006. That of the remaining 30%, in particular a road or the galleries of a cloister erected later, had itself been canceled by the administrative court of Marseille in 2012.
The Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal, in March 2019, then the Court of Cassation, in December 2020, had confirmed a decision taken at first instance in Grasse which condemned this owner to demolish his property, judging that the permit of 2006 had been obtained fraudulently.
The demolition, which was to take place within eighteen months from the judgment of the Court of Cassation, subject to a penalty of 500 euros per day of delay after this period, was never undertaken by the owner, nor by the State services, because of the procedure in progress before the administrative justice. Philippe Soussi and Louis Ribière, lawyers for Patrick Diter, believe that the difference in interpretation between criminal justice and administrative justice “forbids, for the time being, to consider any demolition”.
The conflict tribunal soon to be seized?
The administrative court of Nice seems however to confirm the use of bulldozers on the land of Patrick Diter: “This judgment does not have the effect of reversing the demolitions ordered by the criminal judge”, he specifies.
“There is a principle of law, the Court of Cassation has taken an irrevocable decision which is enforceable and final, and the State always has the judicial authorization to restore the land”, commented for her part Virginie Lachaud- Dana, council of neighbors of the owner. The next step in this judicial mishmash could be an appeal to the Council of State, an option “studied” today by the lawyer.
Given the differences between these two legal decisions, the case could be referred to the conflict tribunal responsible for resolving conflicts of jurisdiction between administrative and judicial courts, according to Louis Ribière.