Court of Appeal rejects Tuscany Towers case

Tuscany Towers in west Auckland.

The Court of Appeal has rejected a case brought by a group of owners of a west Auckland housing complex which suffered leaky building issues.

Six owners of places in New Lynn's 97-unit Tuscany Towers sought to have an interim High Court judgment overturned.

But the appeal court said it did not have jurisdiction to hear the case brought by Qing (Catherine) Gao, Hongyang (Henry) Cui, Li Chen, Wei Min (Paul) Zhou, Yuanxi Liu and Hailong (Jason) Liu.

Their action was against body corporate 183930 and 106 other respondents who are fellow owners of Tuscany Towers.

"The appellants are a small number of the owners in a 97-unit title development in New Lynn, Auckland," the appeal court's decision said.

"The development was subject to weathertightness issues. Repairs to the development were funded from settlement proceeds obtained following proceedings commenced in the Weathertight Homes Tribunal. These proceeds were exhausted before the repairs were completed," it said.

So the body corporate applied to the High Court for a scheme to manage the rest of the repairs.

Most owners agreed to that, the court said, but several unit holders did not, including the six appellants.

Issues in dispute were the cost of the repairs, how much each owner was allocated to pay for those repairs, delegation of powers and duties and how GST refunds should be allocated.