The sweet taste of success was balanced against the years in which the Brittons and 68 other investors in Bianco had their lives "turned upside down and inside out". The pressure had been so great that one woman in their group attempted suicide after losing her husband to cancer.
Mrs Britton confessed to hitting the wall herself and being near despair when the Court of Appeal ruled against the case brought by the 300 Blue Chip investors who paid deposits on apartments in the Bianco, Barclay and Icon developments.
The Britton's original understanding of the 45-page agreement with Blue Chip was that developers needed deposits to get apartment projects up and running and Blue Chip found the investors for the developers, with the deposits to be repaid after two years.
But it all unravelled with the collapse of Blue Chip. Investors were stunned when they were left holding sale and purchase agreements for the apartments.
Later when the big picture emerged, the Brittons realised it was a catastrophe. Investors in their group faced the forfeiture of deposits totalling more than $20 million.
After setting up an email network, the Bianco group and a groundswell of other investors realised their best hope of avoiding financial ruin lay with court action. They engaged the Auckland legal team of Paul Dale and Daniel Grove who agreed to only charge fees if the case was won.
After losing in the High Court, the legal team decided to focus solely on the Securities Act and obtained specialist legal assistance from Neil Campbell.
Mrs Britton said they thought they had nailed it when they emerged from the Court of Appeal hearing. So it came as an even more bitter blow when the court ruled against them, driving her to near breaking point.
The Supreme Court hearing last November was followed by seven anxious months and the first glimmer of hope in June when the court issued a minute expressing a tentative conclusion that the marketing by Blue Chip of its products was in breach of the Securities Act. It had gone on to raise a further issue about the impact which that had on the enforceability of the sale and purchase agreements.
The full judgement was issued two months later in which the five Supreme Court Justices found that the appellants' Securities Act arguments were correct.
The judgement said: "We see the Blue Chip products as providing mechanisms by which Blue Chip sought and obtained financing from the public.
"It is true that they were also buying apartments but under the investment schemes the apartments had a very limited function. Provided all went according to plan, the investors were never to occupy the apartments," the judgement said.
The court also ordered the respondent development companies to pay costs to the appellants of $75,000 plus disbursements.
Mrs Britton said she and her husband were still walking around with smiles on their faces. "We did it - and that is a really good feeling."