Julie Bundock (inset), of Domain Residential Northern Beaches, was found to have caused the fire.
An Australian real estate agent preparing for an open home at a multimillion-dollar property accidentally burned it to the ground — and her employers have been told to pay up.
Sydney real estate agent Julie Bundock was tidying up the four-bedroom home in Avalon Beach when she noticed the tenants had left sheets on the deck to dry, news.com.au reports.
Bundock threw the sheets on to a shelf in a downstairs room and then turned on a light that was positioned above the shelf.
Twenty minutes later a fire took hold and destroyed the entire home, estimated to be worth A$3.2 million ($3.4m).
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It is believed the light heated the bedding until it ignited.
Property owner Peter Bush took a complaint to court, alongside the four tenants who lost everything in the fire.
Bush told the court that Bundock said words to the effect of: “Oh my God Pete, I think I have burnt down your house,” and did so in the presence of others.
“I had been doing some tidying up. I collected some sheets drying on the veranda and threw them on top of a free-standing metal shelving in the bedroom under the stairs,” Bundock reportedly told Bush.
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“I just threw them there Pete, right up against the light on the wall. I think that’s what started the fire.”
Chief Judge in equity justice David Hammerschlag ruled on Tuesday that Bundock “actively created the risk of fire and the consequent harm”.
“That a fire might be caused by putting or throwing bedding up against a burning light is obvious. That risk was plainly foreseeable, and Bundock ought to have known this,” Hammerschlag said in his decision, also noting thhe agent was an “aggressive and uncooperative witness”.
“Her evidence was clearly coloured by a heightened awareness that she had caused the catastrophe,” he stated.
Bundock’s agency, Domain Residential Northern Beaches, argued Bush and the tenants were partly responsible for the fire for not telling them the light would heat up the shelf.
Judge Hammerschlag disagreed, saying neither Bush nor the tenants would have any cause to pass this information on.
“The submission is made in the context where none of the plaintiffs could have possibly or remotely conceived that Bundock might do what she did,” he stated.
“There was no occasion which could reasonably have called for the suggested disclosure. Bundock acted on her own motion. Her actions were the sole cause of the harm.”
The judge ordered Domain Residential Northern Beaches to pay Bush almost A$800,000 and to split a A$131,000 payment among the four tenants.
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