M1 Legal smashes record for compensation awards, only 2 months after record being set

5 min readJun 6, 2022

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M1 Legal. Punishing illegal timeshare operators

Floodgates open as M1 Legal achieve win after win in timeshare compensation challenges

Judges becoming more sympathetic?

In Tenerife’s Arona Court number three, the judges change on a regular basis. The new justices appear to be trending more and more towards the consumer’s rights, as one judge made the landmark ruling that “CLC acted in bad faith by alleging that the vendor agency was on behalf of another company”. In other words, the tired tactic of the timeshare resorts of hiding behind different companies was not going to be accepted.

Another judge made a positive ruling about jurisdiction. He ruled that as long as a company has any presence at all in Spain, even one office, then they can be sued for compensation for breaking Spanish law.

Various other complex rulings were made which benefited the consumer, including details about the abusive nature of contracts

“Things are going our way,” says Fernando Sansegundo, head of M1 Legal. “The Spanish legal system is demonstrably coming down on the side of the victim, and it shows.”

Yet another record week

“We are regularly breaking records in terms of how much money we win in court for our clients,” says Sansegundo. “The record for award amounts in one week was set in March this year, and was £295,000. Last week we broke that record again, less than two months later. It now stands at £310,480 and I fully expect that record itself will also soon be broken.

“The other important aspect of this record week is that it was shared between fourteen claimants. Meaning that they were awarded an average of £22,177 each. It is a significant amount of money, and remember that these people also no longer have the financial burden of their timeshare memberships either thanks to their wins.

May 2022: Another burgeoning month

“We used to consider half a million Euros worth of compensation awards to be a phenomenal amount for one calendar month,” admits Fernando. “Nowadays that figure is regularly achieved. In May this year (at time of going to press, with two working days left in the month) we have already reached £703,470.

“That figure was shared between over thirty recipients. Twenty winning cases were against Club La Costa. Nine more were against Anfi, the giant resort in Gran Canaria.”

Fernando reports some very large individual awards too. “The biggest win of the month was against Club La Costa. The client was awarded an eye watering £69,437. CLC fought hard to appeal the initial decision, but we had that overturned at the Court of Appeal. We pretty much always do. When timeshare resorts appeal like this, it is only ever a delay. Our success rate is 98.6% and that 1.4% we did lose was in the early days, when the process was not as established as it is today.

“There was another giant win of £50,393 for a former Silverpoint owner. The judge ruled in the victim’s favour because of lack of information on the contract. Usually this means floating time or points membership, both have which have been illegal since 1999. The companies knew that they were breaking the law, but chose to do so anyway in order to profit at the expense of consumers. Punishing them for this is unquestionably the right thing to do.”

Another case the M1 Legal head is proud of is a £43,609 win against another Club La Costa company called Paradise resorts. “It is a significant amount of money for the claimant of course. But also it establishes culpability for yet another Club La Costa entity,” says Fernando. “CLC has a complex corporate structure which they try to use to avoid their financial responsibilities. Luckily for their victims, judges are just not accepting that a company as wealthy as CLC is unable meet legally awarded compensation payments to former owners.”

For advice on timeshare claims, or to find out more about engaging M1 Legal, contact their associated claims firm European Consumer Claims (ECC) for a no obligation initial assessment.