In Southland Indoor Leisure Centre Charitable Trust v Invercargill City Council [2017] NZSC 190 the Supreme Court allowed the appeal by the Trust against the dismissal of its claim by the Court of Appeal, but reduced the recovery by 50% for the Trust’s contributory negligence in not acting on engineering advice to investigate roof construction issues. The original judgment was for about $15M. The Supreme Court said that the Court of Appeal was wrong in characterising this case as one of negligent misstatement when it was a simple negligence case based on negligent issue of a code compliance certificate, however, it was correct to reduce any recovery by 50% for contributory negligence.
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