Southern Response, the government-owned insurer, has failed in its bid to have a court decision against it overturned.
In August 2019, Justice Gendall found in favour of Christchurch couple Karl and Alison Dodds Dodds, saying Southern Response had engaged in “false, misleading and deceptive conduct” resulting in the couple receiving a much lower insurance payment than they were entitled to.
However, Southern Response, following Crown Law advice, went to the Court of Appeal, to obtain “greater clarity”.
The appeal was filed late last year.
Karl Dodds was still reading through the decision this afternoon but says despite a small mathematical error that saw a $10,000 reduction in the amount SR will pay them, he understands that the decision is entirely in their favour.
“The original decision made by Justice Gendall last year has been upheld in its entirety.”
“The Court of Appeal has agreed that SRs representations were false and misleading. We are hoping Southern Response doesn’t appeal this decision and to be frank, we can’t see how they could.”
That’s a position their lawyer Peter Woods from Anthony Harper agrees with.
He said “Of course there’s always a chance Southern Response will try to appeal but the Court of Appeal’s decision is abundantly clear, and there is no need for further clarity. Additionally, I doubt that there are grounds to justify an appeal, as the facts and law in this case are straight-forward.”
“Estimates put the number of claims affected by this decision today, between 1600 and 3000 claims therefore the financial impact on Southern Response will be considerable.”
“Based on the amounts we are seeing in the misrepresentations made to homeowners when they settled with SR, this could cost SR as much as $675m. I would strongly recommend that anyone whose house was destroyed by the earthquakes, to get some advice from their lawyer.”
The decision today will see the Dodds receive $250,000 in damages which includes $200,000 for earthquake damage they were not compensated for, plus interest. All legal costs have been recovered from Southern Response and the Government agreed to cover the appeal costs.
