What You Can Claim For
Remedies you can claim for in a Weathertight Homes Tribunal claim, including damages, work orders, and claiming legal costs.
In most cases brought to the Weathertight Homes Tribunal, damages or a sum of money is the remedy sought. A claimant can also apply for a work order requiring that one or more of the respondents carry out work.
In applications for work orders the claim should also be quantified because when the Tribunal makes a work order it must also make an alternative money order in case the work ordered is not carried out.
Claiming damages
Damages can be awarded for:
- reimbursement of remedial costs
- estimated cost of remedial work. This can be either the amounts in the assessor's report or other quotations or estimates. It is often difficult to accurately assess the cost of repairs until they are carried out. In some cases initial estimates have been substantially less than the actual cost of repairs. For this reason owners of leaky homes should consider repairing the property before bringing their claim to the Tribunal, if they can afford to do so
- other costs associated with the repairs such as project management expenses, costs of obtaining building consents and engineers reports
- loss of rental or reduction of rental for the period in which the property was affected by moisture or uninhabitable or the cost of alternative accommodation while repairs were carried out
- interest on loans obtained to carry out repairs
- general damages for inconvenience and other out-of-pocket expenses incurred in repairing the home or due to the home leaking
- accommodation costs if the claimant is required to move out of the house during any repairs.
Claiming legal costs
The Tribunal does not have the power to award legal costs and related costs except in circumstances where a party has caused those costs to be incurred unnecessarily by:
- acting in bad faith, or
- making allegations or objections that do not have substantial merit.
Case Examples of where the Tribunals has awarded costs:
- Simpson Family Trust v Wellington City Council (Costs Decision): Costs were awarded against the claimant as the claims made against the respondents were without substantial merit based on a number of reasons relating to limitation issues, a reduction of the quantum on the second day of the hearing, matters raised by the claimant had no tenable evidence, refusing to settle with the respondents for a sum exceeding the value of the reparis and the amount
- Tabram v Slater (Costs Decision): The previous owners were ordered to pay costs as they knew they had not followed the plans and that their decisions were linked to the defects, but continued to pursue their cross-claims against the designer and the plasterer. The previous owners also knew that both the workmanship guarantee and the producer statement for the cladding work were false, but they chose not to produce evidence of such until the hearing. Accordingly the pursuit of their cross-claims amounted to bad faith and lacked substantial merit
- Pattinson v Kirk (Costs Decision): The Council's application to join another party was unsuccessful. As a result the party who was not joined applied for costs arguing that he incurred costs and expenses due to the Council acting in bad faith. The Tribunal held that it is not unusual to make an application to join a party mentioned in an assessor's report. Nor is it considered to be acting in bad faith.
Related links
