Mark and Suzanne Chamberlain have been fighting the firm which built their home for five years. They have just negotiated another legal hurdle in the Nelson District Court. Photo / Tracy Neal
Mark and Suzanne Chamberlain have been fighting the firm which built their home for five years. They have just negotiated another legal hurdle in the Nelson District Court. Photo / Tracy Neal
A couple fighting the company which built their home say it’s refusing to hand over documents that would prove their claims they were misrepresented in how much it cost.
But the building firm says the couple have been handed all the information requested.
Mark and Suzanne Chamberlain were back in court yesterday to thrash out a request for disclosure they claim LSK Builders Ltd, the company which operates the Nelson franchise of GJ Gardner Homes, is refusing to hand over, despite an earlier court order.
The Chamberlains signed up to a fixed-price contract of $509,000 to build their Nelson home, which included provisional sum allowances of $116,610.
These allowances consider the work that cannot be priced by the contractor when entering into the contract.
The Chamberlains say they’re in the dark over why they’ve been hit with large increases in provisional allowances, including almost $13,000 more in council fees and charges, $20,000 more for earthworks, a timber retaining wall, and the construction of a concrete floor.
The home’s timber foundations and sub-flooring were almost $16,000 more than estimated and engineering works were an additional $6000
The total bill for the design-build home and hillside section has now exceeded $1 million, including the cost of ongoing court action, now in its fifth year.
The house that Suzanne and Mark Chamberlain built has been the subject of a drawn-out legal dispute. Photo / Tracy Neal
The Chamberlains have paid the full amount on the fixed-price contract but on legal advice withheld a portion of the final bill, which is sitting in their lawyer’s trust account.
LSK lodged legal action against the Chamberlains in 2018, alleging they took possession of the home illegally after they were locked out on the moving-in day - because of the dispute over the bill - but forced their way in.
They then lodged a counter-claim around alleged faults with the home they’ve estimated will cost close to $166,000 to fix, and issues with the contract.
The substantive matter was yet to be heard.
The Chamberlains allege the contract did not factor in challenges associated with the hillside site and that LSK omitted costs it knew would be required to complete the job to the specifications set out in the contract.
The Chamberlains’ lawyer Luke Acland told the court an example rested with the lack of supporting information to explain why a quote for concrete work in July 2017 was $20,000 higher after a revised quote the following year.
“The second quote for less work was $20,000 more, with no supporting information as to why,” Acland said.
LSK director Graham Vercoe said under cross-examination the quote was done off the original plan but once the engineering assessment was done the information was handed back to the concrete company to re-assess.
He said the concrete firm refused to say why the cost had increased, on the grounds it was “commercially sensitive” information.
When pushed further, Vercoe said he would provide email correspondence about the quote if it wasn’t already in the bundles of documents provided.
He also said he “understood implicitly” his obligations around discovery, a process of identifying relevant documents to the other parties involved in a case, and denied he had resisted providing the evidence sought.
Vercoe said the Chamberlains were given what they had requested specifically, but perhaps not all that was on file.
LSK said experts commissioned to look at the estimates said they were within industry norms.
Mark Chamberlain said they were not given information about geotech issues with their site they learned had caused “issues with their build”, and wanted to know if homes built by LSK nearby had experienced similar issues which led to delays and higher costs.
Vercoe said delays with the Chamberlain property were caused by them, by the creation of the plans and by sub-contractors, even though LSK had “tried its best to shake the tree”.
LSK also argued the documents were comprehensive but Mark Chamberlain “didn’t have the ability to understand them”.
The secondary school teacher said he had some knowledge of the building industry, having spent a couple of years working for a construction firm.
He had now also spent five years reading complex information in order to gain an understanding of the matters at hand.
He was also challenged on whether he had sought expert advice on how to properly assess building cost estimates, to support his “serious allegation” they were somehow false.
Chamberlain said he had sought expert help to assess the alleged defects in the house, but essentially he was in court yesterday to request the information they had asked for, but hadn’t received.
Acland said it was important to move the process forward so the substantive claim could be heard.
“We either need the documents or a statement to say they don’t exist.”
LSK said the Chamberlains had not provided sufficient grounds for the provision of the documents because they hadn’t been specific enough about what they wanted.
