Supreme Court building DISPUTE

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32052, 29 July 1969, Page 7

Supreme Court building DISPUTE

Arbitration Contested

A dispute over the building of a modern brick house in Smithfield Street, Ashburton, was carried to ' the Supreme Court yesterday when Mr Justice Wilson, in a resumed hearing, was asked to set aside an award at arbitration made by the Canterbury Master Builders’ Association, through its disputes committee.

The applicants were Clifford Rayner Horrell, an engineer, and his wife, Freda Joan Horrell, owners of the house (Mr P. T. Mahon), who claimed “misconduct” by the arbiters as the ground for setting aside their award.

The contract for the house was said to have been let in January, 1966, and still not completed at March, 1967. The defendant builder, lan Mitchell McLaren (Mr A. D. Holland), said that the parties had chosen, in a very informal manner, to hand their dispute over to arbitration, and had agreed to accept the committee’s decision.

To find misconduct on its part it would be necessary to prove that it had refused to consider questions in the submission put to it—such as relating to the cavities behind exterior brickwork. The onus of establishing that was on the applicants, said Mr Holland, and they had failed to do so. His Honour reserved decision.

Tree-Topping Dispute

A tree-feller who contracted with a man to top a macrocarpa tree on a Governor’s Bay property to a height of 10ft, and then by arrangement with a second person felled the tree, is not entitled to recover his original contract price, Mr Justice Wilson has ruled in a reserved decision given in the Supreme Court. “In simple terms, he has not earned it," his Honour says.

The judgment allows an appeal by Arthur Morris Jackson, a photographer (Mr C. A. McVeigh), against a magistrate’s decision in favour of lan Murray Smith, a treefelling contractor (Mr N. D. Thomson), in a case in which the latter had claimed $lO5 as the contract price for topping the tree. Mr Jackson’s object, said his Honour, had been to improve the view from his property, and he had made' arrangements with the owner of the land on which the tree stood, a Mrs Williams, to have it topped; but the latter, after the work had proceeded, had contracted with Mr Smith to fell the tree.

But this, his Honour held, was not performance of his contract with Mr Jackson—and it followed that Mr Smith was not entitled to be paid his original contract price.