Hamilton courtroom closed after mould discovery, judge says cases adjourned as a result

A small leak and "fungal spores" has forced the closure of a courtroom in the Hamilton District Court. Photo / Belinda Feek

A courtroom in Hamilton has been shut and deemed “unsafe” due to the discovery of “fungal spores”, putting judges with an already busy workload under pressure as they struggle with less space to deal with cases.

Judge Noel Cocurullo, who is also the executive judge for the Waikato district, was yesterday forced to cram “a full day’s work into two and a half hours” before handing the courtroom he was working in over to another judge to use for the remainder of the day.

He said he also had to cancel seven days’ worth of judge-alone trials and that the Hamilton District Court has now gone from “a crisis to a big crisis with the lack of courtrooms in this building”.

However, the Ministry of Justice said that although courtroom 4 has been out of action since October 31 due to the mould, it denied any cases have had to be adjourned as a result.

“No cases have been adjourned because of Courtroom 4 not being in use,” Kelvin Watson, the Ministry of Justice Deputy Secretary – Corporate & Digital Services told NZME.

“All cases were moved to alternative courtrooms, resolved prior to the hearing starting or were adjourned for reasons other than the courtroom being unavailable.”

Watson also denied the closure had caused a backlog of cases.

He said a “small leak” was noticed at the base of an external wall of the courtroom and they currently had “several air purifiers installed as a temporary measure”.

Testing in the courtroom was undertaken and only one sample returned a slightly elevated result for mould, he said.

The mould discovery comes after papers released from the Ministry of Justice to RNZ showed court users were being impacted by many poor and very poor buildings, especially in the upper North Island and among district courts.

The ministry assessed the issue and discovered it had spent only a fraction of what it should have on upkeep and infrastructure - but that it would seek to do better.

Tauranga’s court had holding cells that were in a leaky building and its scheduled upgrade had not only been stalled but since doubled in price to $208 million for what was left to complete.

Back in Hamilton yesterday, Judge Cocurullo told members of the public in courtroom 3 that he had been forced to start his day earlier, at 9am, and finish his day’s work by 11.30am.

Judge Noel Cocurullo said the closure of the courtroom has caused adjournments to some cases. Photo / Christine Cornege/NZME.

It saw multiple cases that required him to read further reports - which judges often do during their breaks - adjourned until mid-December, however, the judge said there was no guarantee they would be heard then either.

“Courtroom 4 has been taken offline because it’s got fungal spores,” he said.

“It’s deteriorating. We already were down a courtroom.

“We can not use it, it is a health and safety hazard, so I have been juggling courts all week.

“I had to cancel judge-alone trials ... because I did not have court space to be able to deal with it.”

However, he was able to use another courtroom, often used for youth court proceedings, to chip away at some.

While he praised the Ministry for the work it was doing to fix the problem, he said there was not enough space to get through the “burgeoning workload”.

“The people are working very hard and the Ministry is working tirelessly to try and get it back online but it is taken off as being an unsafe place for us to be in and so we are moved out of it.

“These are proper and responsible reasons of the Ministry to remove these courtrooms from our use but the mere fact is there is a burgeoning workload here and not enough physical space to be able to do the work in the interests of victims, the defendants, their families, and justice.”

Watson said fungal spores could be allergic to sensitive people and the courtroom was closed “out of an abundance of caution”.

It should reopen in two weeks.

“No other courtrooms in Hamilton are considered problematic in this regard,” Watson said.

“However, the age and condition of the Ministry’s property portfolio and the possibility of increasing extreme weather events means that these types of incidents do sometimes occur.”

Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for eight years and been a journalist for 19.