The legitimate status of the propertywhich is being discussed as part of the Save Home decree, can be proven or questioned using the Google Earth images. This was supported by the Council of State with sentence 4973/2024. This is a topic that the Court of Cassation has also dealt with several times. Let’s see what was specified on this last occasion.
The case examined by the Council of State concerned theusing Google Earth by a Municipality which led to the challenge of a building abuse, ordering its demolition. As explained by Edil Portal, which examined the case, according to the person responsible for the abuse, the method of detecting the abuse itself used by the Municipality should not be considered reliable. But the TAR judges recognized the findings extracted from Google Earth as having “significant circumstantial value”, thus leading the person responsible for the abuse to appeal to the Council of State.
The judges of the Council of State explained that “the relevance for evidentiary purposes of the findings extracted from Google Earth has been recognized by both the administrative and criminal judiciary”. In fact, Google Earth reliefs are considered “documentary evidence representing facts, people and things”.
In the case in question, the Google Earth findings were confirmed by the cadastral surveys, which demonstrate that the property has undergone a change in surface area and classification over the years due to continuous unauthorized building interventions.
The appeal was rejected by the Council of State because the person responsible for the abuse limited himself to contesting the reliability of the photographic findings, without providing further evidence in his favour, when instead the burden of proving the time when the abuse took place construction burdens the interested party.
The legitimate status of the property in the Save Home decree
In conclusion, we remind you that in Save Home decree the possibility of proving the verification of the legitimate status of a property not only from the title that legitimized the last building intervention, but also from all the titles issued in the amnesty, provided that the relevant fines have been paid and the technician’s declarations on the construction tolerances are accepted as proof.
