A former council chief executive, Keith Marshall and his partner Louise Buchanan, have settled a long-running legal dispute over the compliance of the swimming pool at their former home.
Photo / NZME Montage
A former council chief executive, Keith Marshall and his partner Louise Buchanan, have settled a long-running legal dispute over the compliance of the swimming pool at their former home.
Photo / NZME Montage
A former council CEO and his partner picked a long-running fight with the Tasman District Council over a pool compliance dispute.
Keith Marshall and Louise Buchanan claimed the council’s negligence led to years of legal battles and stress.
A confidential agreement was reached before a Supreme Court hearing, ending the “horrendous period” for them.
A former council boss says he and his partner have been “battered, bullied, and victim-blamed” by the local council they fought for years over an “unlawful” swimming pool at their award-winning home. Now, they are glad it’s finally over.
Keith Marshall and his partner Louise Buchanan have settled with the Tasman District Council after a long-running legal spat over historic swimming pool compliance matters at the luxury property they once owned.
They say the confidential agreement was reached days before the matter was due to be heard in the Supreme Court, ending an “absolutely horrendous period” of their lives.
Marshall, a now-retired council chief executive, said the council’s stance amounted to “repeated negligence” which had been exhausting.
“We have been worn down over the past five years, but we are very happy and relieved that the matter for us is now at an end - once and for all,” he said.
In the deep end
The couple were thrust into the deep end when they put the home in rural Tasman on the market. They had bought it about a decade earlier, already built with the pool in situ.
It was deemed legally compliant throughout its construction and sign-off, but a council inspection in 2019 when they went to sell, found the pool non-compliant because the property’s doors that led to the pool were not self-closing or alarmed.
The rural Tasman home at the centre of a long-running legal spat over the discovery years after it was built the pool wasn't compliant. Photo / Supplied.
Marshall, who once headed the neighbouring Nelson City Council executive branch, said the genesis of proceedings by him and Buchanan was one of the earlier pool inspections.
“It was that inspection and categorical assertion by TDC that the pool was fully compliant that had given rise to the basis of proceedings against TDC.”
He alleged the inspection had been carried out by a relative of then-deputy mayor, and now mayor, Tim King, which he considered was a potential conflict of interest. He raised it with the council then, but it appeared to have gone nowhere.
The council told NZME that it was irrelevant who had done the inspection.
In a statement, the council also said it disagreed with how Marshall’s approach to the matter has been characterised.
“From the very beginning, the council has worked with the claimants to resolve this dispute.
“When that failed and they filed proceedings in the High Court, the council engaged in the process,” the council said.
Marshall said that from his perspective, the council had been wrong about the property’s compliance for 15 years from 2004 through to 2019, from consenting to numerous inspections during building and final sign-off and in issuing a code compliance certificate (CCC) in 2006.
Central feature
The pool was the central feature of the award-winning Wakefield home.
In 2008, shortly after Marshall was appointed the chief executive of Nelson City Council, he and Buchanan purchased the home via a family trust.
The following year, the Tasman council required the property’s pool to be registered. An officer inspected the pool that year and later in 2012, examining locks and latches on the home’s doors, which were deemed compliant.
In 2019, the couple put the home on the market and discovered the pool was non-compliant.
They raised their concerns about the previous inspections and were told that the doors adjacent to the pool were not compliant with the Building Act.
The couple took the property off the market and sought a determination under the Building Act.
In late 2020, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment determined the doors were not compliant and additionally, fencing was required. The couple complied, and erected fences around the pool.
The couple could not challenge the issuing of the original CCC in 2006 due to a 10-year limitation within the Building Act.
Instead, they launched proceedings against the council in respect of the 2009 and 2012 inspections, claiming they were conducted negligently.
The High Court ruled the council was negligent in issuing both the building consent and CCC, undertaking the 2009 and 2012 inspections, and representations made to the couple, who were awarded $270,000 in damages.
The Tasman council then appealed that decision, and in 2024 the Court of Appeal set aside the damages awarded and found instead that the TDC did not have a legal duty of care to homeowners concerning pool inspections, but only to children under the age of 6 for pool safety.
The council told NZME the Court of Appeal accepted its position that the safety of children was paramount as opposed to a duty of council to protect a pool owner from economic loss.
The couple had by then sold the property and moved out in early 2024, but unhappy with the decision, proceeded to have it tested in the Supreme Court.
The hearing was to have been on March 11 this year, but was cancelled by a confidential settlement being reached.
Marshall said it now felt like a “huge weight has been lifted”.
“This settlement allows us to put this all behind us and move on with our lives.”
Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.
