Defending Late Construction Defects Claims in the UAE

A contractor who handed over a residential tower in Business Bay in 2019 receives a legal notice in 2026. The developer alleges cracking in the structural slabs of three floors and demands remediation under decennial liability, plus the cost of temporary relocation for the affected units. The contractor's project file is archived, the site team has moved on, and the original supervising engineer has closed its UAE office. The instinct is to treat the claim as stale and ignore it. That instinct can lose the case before it starts.

Two questions decide whether this claim survives, and both are answerable from documents the contractor should already hold. When did the ten-year clock start, and is the alleged defect even the kind of defect decennial liability covers. A late defects claim is not automatically a strong claim, and it is not automatically a weak one. For construction lawyers in Dubai, the defence is built in the first two weeks after the notice arrives, by reconstructing dates and characterising the defect before the claimant fixes those facts in its favour.

When did the ten-year clock start, and has it already run out

Article 880 of the UAE Civil Code makes the contractor and the supervising engineer jointly liable for ten years from delivery of the works for total or partial collapse and for any defect that threatens the building's stability or safety. The word that controls the defence is delivery. The ten-year period runs from final delivery, which in practice is the date recorded in the Taking Over Certificate, not provisional acceptance and not the date the developer started selling units.

This matters because a defect that first appears after the ten-year period closes falls outside decennial liability entirely. If the tower was delivered in March 2019 and the cracking is alleged for the first time in April 2026, the claim sits inside the window. If delivery was March 2016 and the same notice arrives in April 2026, the decennial route is closed and the developer is left arguing ordinary contractual or tort claims, which carry their own and often harder hurdles. The single most valuable document in the file is therefore the Taking Over Certificate, and any contractor facing a late claim should locate and date it before responding to anything.

The mechanics of the ten-year period, the strict no-fault basis of the liability, and what changes under the new Civil Code are covered in our guide to UAE decennial liability for contractors and engineers. The focus here is narrower: how a contractor defends once the claim has already landed.

The three-year limitation defence most contractors miss

The ten-year exposure window is not the only clock. Article 883 of the Civil Code provides that a decennial claim cannot be heard after three years from the collapse or from the discovery of the defect. This is a separate and shorter limitation period, and it is the defence contractors most often fail to plead because they assume the only relevant number is ten.

The practical effect is sharp. If the developer discovered the cracking in 2021, commissioned a report, corresponded with the contractor about it, then waited until 2026 to sue, the three-year period expired in 2024. The claim is time barred even though it sits well within the ten-year exposure window. Discovery, not handover, starts this clock, and the date of discovery becomes the central evidential fight in most late claims. Inspection reports, snagging lists, owners' association minutes, insurance correspondence, and the developer's own maintenance records can all establish that the defect was known years before the notice was served. A contractor that pulls those documents early can convert a claim that looks alive into one that is statute barred. The time-bar interaction between Articles 880 and 883 has been examined repeatedly by the UAE courts, and the burden of pinning down discovery rewards whichever party documents it first.

Is the defect structural, or does it belong to the expired defects liability period

Decennial liability does not cover every defect in a building. The Federal Supreme Court has restricted Article 880 to total or partial collapse and to defects that threaten the soundness and stability of the structure. Cracked structural slabs, foundation movement, and failures in load-bearing elements fall inside. Cracked floor tiles, failed waterproofing membranes, faulty air-conditioning, lift breakdowns, and aesthetic finishing defects fall outside, and are governed instead by the contractual defects liability period, which under most FIDIC and bespoke contracts runs for twelve months from handover.

For a claim brought in year seven, that distinction often ends the case. If the developer has labelled a non-structural problem as a decennial defect to reach the ten-year window, the contractor's defence is to characterise the defect correctly and show that the only applicable period, the contractual one, expired six years earlier. This requires a technical expert engaged early, because the court will decide scope on the engineering evidence, not on the label in the statement of claim. A defect described as "structural cracking" in a legal notice is sometimes plaster shrinkage or screed failure once an engineer inspects it.

What strict liability does and does not take away from the defence

Decennial liability is strict. The developer does not have to prove that the contractor or the engineer was negligent, only that the building collapsed or developed a defect threatening its stability. A contractor cannot defend a decennial claim by showing it followed good practice and made no mistake.

What strict liability does not remove is the causation defence. If the cracking was caused by the developer's own conduct after handover, the chain back to the original works can be broken. Unauthorised structural alterations by an owner, removal of load-bearing elements during a fit-out, overloading of slabs beyond design capacity, and years of failed maintenance are all external causes that a contractor can plead. The limit on this defence is Article 880(2), which keeps the contractor liable even where the defect arises from a problem in the ground itself. A contractor cannot escape by saying the soil was bad, because investigating the ground was its responsibility. It can escape by showing that someone else damaged a sound building after it was delivered. The evidence for this comes from the building's post-handover history, so the developer's maintenance and modification records become as important to the defence as the contractor's own project file.

Who can actually bring this claim against you

Not everyone who suffers loss from a structural defect can sue under the decennial provisions. The Dubai Court of Cassation has confirmed that only parties with a contractual relationship to the contractor or the engineer can rely on Article 880. A neighbouring landowner whose property is damaged by a partial collapse has to bring a tort claim, not a decennial one, and a subsequent purchaser of a unit usually has no direct decennial route to the original contractor unless the liability has been passed down through a chain of contractual warranties.

There is an important exception for jointly owned property in Dubai. Article 40 of Law No. 6 of 2019 gives owners of jointly owned real estate a direct ten-year route against the developer for structural defects, measured from the completion certificate. So a contractor facing a claim should establish at the outset who is actually suing. A developer suing under the original construction contract is one situation. An owners' association suing under the joint ownership law is another. An individual unit owner with no contractual chain to the contractor may have no standing at all, and that is a complete defence regardless of how serious the defect is.

How the new Civil Code changes the defence from June 2026

Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2025, the new Civil Transactions Law, comes into force on 1 June 2026 and repeals the 1985 Civil Code. The muqawala provisions that govern construction contracts move from Articles 872 to 896 into Articles 812 to 839. For decennial liability, the core regime survives. The ten-year strict liability remains, the three-year claim window remains, and the rule voiding any clause that tries to exclude or limit decennial liability remains.

The change that matters for a contractor reading this is the transitional rule. Contracts concluded before 1 June 2026 stay governed by the 1985 Civil Code. A defects claim landing in 2026 or 2027 on a project contracted in 2019 is still argued under the old article numbers, and the case law built around Articles 880 and 883 still applies. Contractors and engineers should not assume the new numbering applies to older projects, and should not let a claimant cite the wrong code. The analysis of the new Civil Code's effect on construction contracts sets out the renumbering and the modest substantive changes, including a clearer position on recovery against subcontractors, which affects how a defending contractor frames its own onward claims.

How should UAE contractors respond to a late construction defects claim?

A construction defects claim brought years after handover is won or lost on dates and characterisation, not on whether the contractor built well. The contractor that treats a 2026 notice on a 2019 project as a nuisance, and waits to respond, hands the developer time to fix the discovery date and the defect description in its own favour. The contractor that locates the Taking Over Certificate, reconstructs when the developer first knew of the defect, and engages an engineer to characterise the defect, often finds the claim is time barred under Article 883, out of scope under Article 880, or out of the ten-year window altogether.

The most time-sensitive action is the limitation analysis. The three-year period under Article 883 runs from discovery, and the evidence that proves an early discovery date sits in inspection reports, owners' association records, and insurance files that become harder to obtain as time passes. A contractor that establishes the discovery date in the first weeks after the notice controls the strongest single defence available.

For contractors, engineers, and developers facing or anticipating a decennial liability claim in the UAE, our construction law team advises on the defence strategy, the limitation position, and the technical evidence needed to characterise the defect correctly before the claim is fixed in court.

‍