Leaky buildings: a rich new vein for lawyers

By ANDREW LAXON and BERNARD ORSMAN

The leaky building crisis is turning into a growth industry for lawyers, as frustrated home owners increasingly resort to legal action to get their homes fixed.

One Auckland lawyer has released a checklist of 12 groups who could be sued by home owners.

Lawyers are the main target of a conference in Auckland next month bringing together technical and legal experts to discuss the problem.



The organiser of the Weathertightness Construction Conference, Kate Woodd, said lawyers all over Auckland - from big firms experienced in building litigation work to small suburban firms - were increasingly taking on building disputes featuring rotting timber and toxic mould such as stachbotrys.

She agreed with this week's report to the Building Industry Authority, which warned of a "major systemic breakdown across the industry" if action was not taken soon.

"The issue is huge and has the potential to seriously damage the property market and construction industry in New Zealand if it isn't handled carefully," she said.

"The trouble is that for some time there hasn't been a cohesive and co-operative approach to the problem.

"Fortunately the Building Industry Authority has in recent months taken the problem on board and is being proactive - but the risk is there that we will end up with a similar crisis to that which has been experienced in Canada and the US."

Ms Woodd said she had hoped to include insurance issues on the programme but the topic was apparently too commercially sensitive for anyone from either the Insurance Council or the insurance companies she had approached.

Auckland lawyer John Carter has published a checklist of potential legal targets for home owners.

Entitled "Got a leaky building?" it includes the person who sold the house (for breach of contract or negligence), the developer, builder, sub-contractors, architect, project manager and engineer (all for various forms of negligence), the local council (for breaching the Building Act over inspection or issuing of code compliance) and the suppliers (for supplying defective products).

Lawyers previously spoken to by the Herald say councils are the most obvious target as they can always pay.

Some developers tend to sell through shelf companies, a professionally questionable but legal tactic which protects them from being sued later.

Auckland City Council officers said yesterday that simple mistakes such as the faulty application of building paper were resulting in wooden framing plates rotting.

Principal building officer Bob De Leur said council building inspectors were finding many cases of building paper not fully covering the bottom wooden plates on houses. That exposed the plates to any water that got inside the external walls and ran down the building paper.

Mr De Leur said building inspectors were trying to educate contractors about standards but, in some cases, contractors were still making the same mistakes after three site visits.

Contractors were ordered to rectify any problems inspectors came across but they could not be on site to inspect every piece of work.

Mr De Leur said the council was issuing contractors with a checklist of 20 to 30 problems over the application of stucco to make sure the standards were correctly followed.

Customer Services director Paul Sonderer said the council graded developers and contractors according to their performance and the level of risk associated with projects, but he refused to name names.

A general rule of thumb was to trust contractors who had a long and proven track record in the industry and to be wary of new companies with a "labour only" workforce.

The council said it had 12 legal claims before it relating to leaky buildings.

* The Weathertightness Construction Conference will be held on October 10 in Auckland. For information, ring (09) 486-9571.

* If you have information about leaking buildings,
email the Herald or fax (09) 373-6421.

Further reading
Feature: Leaky buildings

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