How to minimise the costs of taking legal action on a leaky builiding.

Beware !!!

The Leaky Building Gravy Train has a huge head of steam and will sweep you away with it at every opportunity.

EVERYTHING COSTS BIG-TIME in a Leaky building litigation.

With Lawyers charging $300 per hour, even the most meanial of tasks can cost you a fortune.

In a Body Corporate situation it is even worse, because the case is effectively a “Class Action” whereby the Body corp is the first plaintiff, sueing the council and builders and developers etc, and then each of the individual owners as second, third, fourth etc plaintiffs also effectively have their own cases.

Initial documentation

Everyone must submit personal affidavits of what they know about he property and hand over their complete property file for inspection by all parties to the case.
Everything from the adverts that attracted you to the place, to the sale & purchase agreement, LIMS, inspections and valuation reports, to the finance agreement and mortgage documentation, tenancy agreements, to all the body corp meeting minutes and other correspondence that you have, whether between you and the body corp, or your lawyer, or tenants, and anything else that could even remotely be connected to the property.
Collecting this data together tends to get left as low priority by individual owners while they go about their busy lives, and it takes phone calls from the lawyers or associates (at $300 per hour) to prompt the completion of the task.
It takes hours to collate all these items, record the list, read and pick out any important facts that may help or hinder the case, and them compile the “Class Action” case.
Every minute of this costs money, and a considerable amount can be saved by some simple organisation that can easily be performed by the Body Corp as a group.
The Better organised Body Corp Secretaries now make it a practice of getting everyone together if possible, along with their documentation, helping each other collate it and record on a list, and make copies where required, plus then have the lawyers present to help everyone complete a background information document from which the affidavits can be written.
This Simple organisation can save tens of thousands of dollars in lawyer time.

Ongoing documentation costs

The lawyers will require that your propery file stays with them so they have easy access, and so do any of the defendants, who have a right of “Discovery”.
This can become an issue if there is documentation that you require access to, such as tenancy agreements, loan documentation etc.
Every time you ring up the lawyer to ask for a copy of this stuff to be sent to you, it is costing for the phone time and for any scanning or copying time, again often at $300 per hour.
So if it is likely you will need something, get it copied before you send in the file, or go visit the lawyer yourself & take the documents out, get them copied, then return, so you are doing the simple work rather than paying a legal secretary at ten times your hourly rate to copy your documents.

Similarly, if further affidavits or unanimous body corp decisions are required, (such as agreement on a settlement negotiating committee and its terms ) it normally is much more efficient to get everyone together in a Body Corp meeting and get things signed in one lot, rather than leave the lawyers to chase each owner individually.

A bit of forward thinking can minimise the involvement required from these high priced lawyers, and hence minimse the cost to you.
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Auckland Legal Advocate Services