Actress Toni Collette and her husband have been asked to pay over $850,000 in damages and legal costs by a Sydney court after they pulled out of a deal to purchase a home at the last moment.
Earlier this month, Sydney Morning Herald reported that actress Toni Collette and husband Dave Galafassi had backed out at the last minute from buying a Paddington terrace house from Nick and Susan Kelly and that the Kelly couple were, therefore, suing Collette and her husband. After depositing an advance of $317,500 in September 2011 and promising to make the complete payment of $6.35 million by December, Collette, at the last moment backed out of the deal claiming she didn't have enough money to make the full payment.
"We feel sick about this," Collette told McGrath real estate agent Ben Collier the day after the deal was cancelled "You and the vendors (have been) nothing but great and we apologize profusely."
Now, The Australian reports that Collette and her husband have lost the case and the court has ordered them to pay damages of nearly $815,000 plus legal costs.
Last year, the Kelly's house was finally sold for $5.5 million and that's when the couple decided to sue Collette and her husband for the loss they incurred.
Reportedly, Collette did write to Susan Kelly and asked them to settle the matter "less publicly." Collette also revealed in court that a colleague of Collier's was also to blame as she had sent out wrong messages about a house that Collette wanted to sell. According to Collette, the agent (Collier's colleagues) had told her that the house Collette was looking to sell could be sold for $4 million and then later quoted $3.5 million to the media.
Collette also said that the Kellys didn't take proper measures to sell their property for its actual worth and didn't do a proper market analysis to get a good price for their home. And so it was unfair that they should sue Collette and her husband for the losses.
Acting Justice William Windeyer ruled Kelly had "made reasonable efforts to minimize her loss and took reasonable care in selling the property for the price which she did". He also said that Collette and her husband had no intensions of buying the Paddington terrace house in the first place as they had already sold their Bronte home and bought another property.
