Small victory in case against James Hardie
Building supplies giant James Hardie has lost a bid to have its Ireland-based parent company removed from a $250 million leaky building claim.
Lawyer Adina Thorn is running a class-action lawsuit on behalf of about 1000 leaky building owners claiming James Hardie’s Harditex, Monotek and Titan products were faulty.
Thorn welcomed the Court of Appeal decision, which allowed the owners she acts for to continue claiming against the Ireland-registered parent company of the James Hardie Group.
James Hardie Industries PLC had sought to be removed from the claim, and appealed the High Court’s decision that it should remain in, Thorn said.
The class action centres on properties constructed or reclad between 1983 and 2011.
They were clad in fibre cement sheets with one or other of the brand names Harditex, Monotek or Titan (sometimes also known as Titan Board) manufactured by either Studorp (prior to 1998) or James Hardie New Zealand.
The homeowners claim James Hardie companies, including the Irish parent, had a duty to warn if it knew its products were faulty, which Thorn is seeking to prove.
James Hardie had argued that courts around the world had consistently held that the use of a group management structure did not make the ‘‘parent liable for the acts of a subsidiary’’.
Thorn said: ‘‘We want to know what happened here. No company in a corporate group really operates in a silo.’’