Work on third-party building components: the work-damage exclusion can be decisive.
An installation-company case shows why damage to the very object being worked on and relevant extensions need specific review.
Case law
Austrian Supreme Court decisions relevant to business liability.
These ten decisions are taken from the already verified court-decision collection of the business portal. The full judgment, facts and policy wording remain decisive.
Guest property: a hospitality business owes due care, not an absolute guarantee.
The decision concerned innkeeper liability after burglary and illustrates the role of reasonable precautions.
Customer areas must be reasonably safe; contributory negligence can also matter.
The Court considered safety duties in a business area and the possible contributory negligence of the customer.
Not every loss from defective planning is merely the uninsured cost of performance.
The Court distinguished the performance interest from genuine consequential loss arising from defective planning.
Data backup must be clarified professionally before work on IT systems.
The decision illustrates substantial liability exposure during maintenance, migration and repair of IT systems.
Security services require due attention, not a guarantee that every theft will be prevented.
The case highlights duty of care, instructions, control routines and documentation in security services.
Defective ventilation systems: improvement costs may form part of damages.
The Court dealt with compensation for the cost required to rectify defective technical installations.
Business liability does not automatically cover the company’s own performance risk.
The decision illustrates the distinction between the cost of properly completing one’s own work and insured consequential damage.
An alarm is ineffective if the alert is not technically forwarded.
Planning, programming, maintenance, testing and handover of alarm systems can be liability-relevant.
Water ingress at a roof may have several causes; planning and trades must be assessed separately.
The case shows why causation, responsibility shares, documentation and limitation periods need careful review.