Soul Friends' new premises in Ashhurst, just outside Palmerston North. Photo / Simone Morrison
A mother and son duo who opposed a pet crematorium being built next door to them have been ordered to pay the owners of the business more than $120,000 after they dragged out the consent process.
It was a case Environment Court Judge Brian Dwyer described as “without substance” when he ordered Bevan and Isobel Currie to pay for the legal costs of both the crematorium and the council.
“I don’t think there’s ever a perfect place to put a crematorium,” Soul Friends Pet Cremations owner Simone Morrison told NZME.
“I think it’s always going to spark the fears around land value for people’s property and it’s a reasonable objection to have.
“But for the most part people’s objections seem to be ‘I just don’t like it being there’.”
Morrison said that the opposition to the crematorium being built nearby in Ashhurst, just outside of Palmerston North, had delayed construction by about 18 months but they were now “galloping” to finish the property before Christmas after the Environment Court granted their consent to build earlier this year.
At the moment the business does around 800 cremations a month for vet clinics and private customers and the new premises will allow space for families to sit down and mourn their animals.
Morrison said that the Curries had utilised the consent process “to the fullest” and in their submissions to the court said the duo had conducted their case in a way that unnecessarily lengthened the process, were overly complicated in their argument, advanced arguments that were without substance and refused to reach a reasonable settlement.
“I try not to take it personally because this is a really important service that we provide,” Morrison said.
Bevan Currie declined to comment when contacted by NZME but in submissions to the Environment Court said that he and his mother’s case was necessary to determine whether resource consent had been validly granted.
During the case, the Curries said that Soul Farm had applied for the consent under the name Tolly Farm Ltd - which is its registered name - and the consent should be void because of that. However, in an earlier decision Judge Dwyer said it was clear who the applicant was.
Another aspect of their case was that the construction of a crematorium was an undesirable activity on land that was in the process of being rezoned by the council for residential development.
In an order released last week Judge Dwyer ordered the Curries to pay the crematorium $63,000 and the Palmerston North City Council $58,400 in legal costs as they were unsuccessful in opposing the facility being built.
“…they failed to establish on a factual basis how allowing the proposal might in some way frustrate the Council’s long-term planning intentions…” Dwyer said in his decision.
“The Appellants’ failure was so egregious as to warrant full reimbursement of the other parties’ costs regarding this aspect of the appeal.”
An earlier decision from Dwyer noted that if the Curries succeeded in their opposition then it would have been “a significant triumph of form over substance”.
The Palmerston North City Council claimed $58,400 in legal costs for landscape and noise expert witnesses to testify before the court after mediation with the Curries failed.
It said that despite the Curries claiming that noise and landscaping issues were contested issues they conceded partway through the case they were minor issues which essentially made the council’s experts redundant.
“The Council was unnecessarily put to the cost of calling technical evidence on the topics of noise and landscape effects, and its experts were unreasonably required to attend the hearing for cross-examination,” they noted in their submissions to the court.
Judge Dwyer also noted that requiring those witnesses to be called “unnecessarily lengthened the hearing and imposed unnecessary costs on other parties”.
Soul Friends submitted that the Curries’ case was “fundamentally flawed and lacking in merit” and said that the company should not have to have incurred the legal costs it did by defending its consent.
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.
Police said those involved were known to each other.