About 20,000 homeowners whose houses were built using falsely graded timber are being sought by the Commerce Commission to share in a compensation bid.
In a lawsuit brought on behalf of customers and competitors, the commission is suing Carter Holt Harvey over its deliberate mislabelling of wood usedfor framing and roof trusses.
For more than four years, the company sold timber as premium-grade Laserframe MGP10 when it knew it was not strong enough to meet the standard. It stopped after commission raids in 2003, and pleaded guilty last year to charges laid under the Fair Trading Act.
It was fined $900,000. A senior executive who also pleaded guilty, Maurice Reid, was fined $20,000.
A case against three other managers was dropped last month, but the commission said it was considering laying charges against more executives.
In part two of an investigation into the scandal, The Business reveals today that CHH sought to have the civil action struck out, alleging it was "oppressive or wrongly brought by the commission".
But in a ruling last month, Justice Raynor Asher said the commission was entitled to pursue damages and compensation, even though it could not yet name the claimants or say how much was being sought.
The commission had the ability to take legal action on behalf of a large number of claimants even if, at the time of laying the proceedings, it was not able to identify them, he said.
In an attempt to track down those people, the commission will ask them to make contact through an email address, which will be available on its website from June 25.
Houses built with the timber are unlikely to suffer serious defects, although some will have problems such as squeaky floors or sagging roofs. But, the commission said, customers would have paid too much for the timber, although exactly how much was not yet known.
