$189K costs awarded in Tower winch case

The High Court has awarded Christchurch architect Greg Young nearly $190,000 in costs for his case against Tower Insurance.

In December, Justice David Gendall found that Greg Young’s Mt Pleasant house was beyond repair and that Tower was liable to pay $1.6 million to rebuild it.

Tower had previously proposed winching Young’s house back into place and repairing it.

At the time Young, a respected architect, said he was ‘‘dumbfounded’’ by the proposal.

He claimed the house had slid at least 100 millimetres down a hillside.

In the December ruling, Gendall agreed with a claim Tower withheld a report which said Young’s home needed to be rebuilt.

‘‘The plaintiff alleges that withholding the June 2011 report … which, although only a brief report, did recommend a rebuild of the house, is a serious breach of the defendant’s obligation of good faith,’’ says the ruling.

The judge dismissed Tower’s proposal to winch Young’s home back into place, which did not comply with the insurer’s obligations as per its policy with Young.

Court documents said the repair method was not known to have been used in Christchurch’s hillside suburbs.

Tower disputed some of the $194,116 in proceedings costs, expert witness costs, other witness expenses and court fees Young sought after the decision.

Counsel for the insurance company argued Young was not entirely successful in his claims (he originally sought more than $2 million), so Tower should not be liable for all of the costs.

The defendants also argued the hearing time was unnecessarily extended by the plaintiffs’ actions, and some witness statements were irrelevant to the hearing.

Gendall did not accept that Tower should pay less because Young did not receive the full amount sought in the hearing.

However, he did reduce some witness costs, and accepted the plaintiffs had ‘‘unnecessarily extended’’ the trial by a full day arguing Tower had taken part in deliberate wrongdoing.

Total costs awarded were $188,724.