‘HousingLand9 A Rubbish Dump, Company Claims

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32360, 28 July 1970, Page 28

‘HousingLand 9 A Rubbish Dump, Company Claims

{New Zealand Press Association; WELLINGTON, July 27. A company had understood that it was buying a housing subdivision but appeared to have been sold a rubbish dump, Mr J. H. Dunn said in the Supreme Court in Wellington today.

He appeared for Beazley Properties, Ltd, which is claiming $30,105 damages against the Nelson City Council for alleged misrepresentation. The Chief Justice (Sir Richard Wild) is presiding. Wjth Mr Dunn is Miss S. M. Moran. The Nelson City Council is represented by Mr G. C. Kent, with him Mr R. A. Fletcher. tn its statement of claim the plaintiff alleges that the council advertised for tenders for the purchase of the whole or parts of a subdivision fronting North Road, Nelson; and comprising 22 lots. Negotiations for the purchase took place between the parties and it was represented to the plaintiff by the assistant city engineer that the subdivision had been filled with clean filling, properly compacted, and that it was suitable for housing construction. The land was in fact filled with trade refuse, including sawdust and other non-com-pactable material, was subject to subsidence, and was therefore unsuitable and unsafe for housing. The plaintiff alleges that the land is of no value. In its statement of defence, the council admits that the land was not filled with hard filling, and that it contained trade refuse, including sawdust It claims, however, that the ptaintiff had been told that building permits for

houses on . the subdivision would be subject to special conditions, requiring special foundations. Mr Dunn said the plaintiff was the property-owning subsidiary of Beazley Homes, Ltd, which worked throughout New Zealand as a housebuilding company. In November, 1968, test bores were put down on the land bought by the plaintiff. These showed that the land had been filled by random tipping of refuse, and that the refuse was still in the process of decomposition. The bores also showed that the land would be subject to quite marked differential settlement, with consequent damage to any buildings that might be put on it In evidence, George Marinkovic said he was land purchaseofficer and field advis-

er for Beazley Homes, Ltd. In October, 1967, he was sent to Nelson to investigate the possibility of acquiring land. He saw the Nelson City Council’s assistant engineer, Mr Crampton, who told him that the corporation owned several pieces of land and that he might be interested in one or more of the blocks. Mr Marinkovic said that when he got to North Road he told Mr Crampton that he was rather appalled at the general appearance and the obvious tipping of rubbish that was taking place.

Marinkovic said. “I questioned him, and he said they had used good clean fill, which had been put in a foot at a time and then compacted.”

“He told me not to take too much notice of what I saw going on in the tipping face because the area of residential land in which I was interested, on the other side of the road, had not been done in the same manner,” Mr