Court Proceedings

Yesterday my wife and I were in court regarding our appeal on the Adjudicators ruling that resulted in HNZ not having to pay for repairs we had done to the house, causing damage to our property and in our view misleading the adjudicator.

Given that HNZ have laid criminal charges against us we felt that as there is evidence that would be beneficial to us in the criminal matter rather than bringing this information to light in the civil matter we would vacate these proceedings and deal with it at a later date once the criminal matters are resolved.

The Judged hit us for $300.00 costs and had we known that we would be liable for costs we would not have done this however as we have tried to get legal assistance and to date not been able to we were none the wiser.

However while waiting out side the court rooms our ex tenancy manager meet with another person who I believe to be a tenancy manager from another region. They proceeded to discuss the cases they were working on including various matters that were completely unrelated to this appearance such as what my wife and I believe was information about our criminal case. Keep in mind that this discussion is going on within a public area and at one stage was taken out side in the courtyard.

From their conversation I was able to ascertain that the other tenancy manager was there for one of her tenants. I later managed to catch up with this tenant and had a discussion with them about their case. I found there to be quite a number of similarities in the way our cases had been handled and the attitude of HNZ to run in guns blazing as I feel they have done in our case with little regard for the facts or the procedure that has been set down for them to follow.

Unfortunately the lady we meet with has not been able to get legal representation to assist her and has also been evicted from her house. I do not know the full story behind her case and have my own problems to deal with but there was enough there to reinforce the view I currently hold of HNZ and their so called procedure.

I have spoken to the office of the Privacy Commissioner and have confirmed with them that the conversation that took place outside of the court rooms may be another breach in the privacy act but given that HNZ has not been held accountable for their previous breach I wonder if its even worth wasting my time and making another complaint.