
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch begins the slow recovery process after last weeks devastating 7.1 earthquake. The historic MLC Building on Manchester Street is due for demolition. Manchester Courts".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch begins the slow recovery process after last weeks devastating 7.1 earthquake. The historic MLC Building on Manchester Street is due for demolition. Manchester Courts".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch begins the slow recovery process after last weeks devastating 7.1 earthquake. The historic MLC Building on Manchester Street is due for demolition. Manchester Courts".
A photograph submitted by Grant Fife to the QuakeStories website. The description reads, "September Quake. Cranmer Court apartments 05/09/2010. The building is quickly supported while damaged chimneys are removed.".
An interior view of the Cranmer Court building's octagonal corner section, which housed Plato Creative from March 2008 to November 2009. Although designed to house a book depot, the room was used as the principal's office while Christchurch Normal School was operating from the building. The photograph showcases its high windows and intricate wooden ceiling.
A complaint against an engineer whose firm designed the CTV building that collapsed in the Christchurch earthquake will be heard by a disciplinary committee on Monday. One-hundred-and-fifteen people were killed when the six-storey building came down in February 2011. Dr Alan Reay lost a High Court bid to stop the hearing. Reporter Anna Sargent spoke to Corin Dann.
The damaged Cranmer Courts on the corner of Kilmore and Montreal Streets. The corner of the building has crumbled onto the street, which is now littered with broken masonry. Wire fencing placed around the building after the 4 September 2010 earthquake has managed to keep the debris away from the road.
A photograph submitted by Grant Fife to the QuakeStories website. The description reads, "February Quake. Cranmer Court apartments 03/04/2011. The February quake was too much for the already damaged buildings.".
A view of the Cranmer Court building on the corner of Kilmore and Montreal Streets, showing damage from the 4 September 2010 earthquake. Masonry has fallen away from the apexes of several of the building's gables, which have been reinforced with timber bracing. A green cord has been used to tie bracing to the octagonal section on the corner of the building. This corner section is the part that housed Plato Creative from March 2008 to November 2009.
A photograph of the earthquake damage to the Cranmer Courts on the corner of Montreal and Kilmore Streets. The top of the closest gable has broken and is now covered in a tarpaulin. In the distance, a chimney has also been removed. Wire fencing and road cones have been placed around the building as a cordon.
Copy of a file photograph captioned by Fairfax, "The New Zealand Express Company's new building, corner of Hereford Street and Manchester Street. Electric lighting, pumping, elevators, May & Otway's fire alarms, bells and telephones, supplied by Messrs Turnbull & Jones Ltd. Manchester courts MLC building from The Weekly Press 'New Zealand Exhibition Year Special Industrial & Commercial Number' December 1906".
One landscape colour digital photograph taken on 11 June 2011 showing the demolition of the old Lyttelton Library, Council Chambers and Magistrates' Court on the corner of Oxford Street and Sumner Road. The photograph shows the upper floor of the building being demolished with a high reach digger. At the time of the 22 February 2011 Earthquake...
An aerial photograph of Victoria Square and the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Richard Peebles is further concerned over the Manchester Courts building, which was severely damaged in the September earthquake and has now become more unstable. There is talk to move the cordons further back".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Richard Peebles as close as he can get to his Manchester Courts which has just been awarded a demolition permit after a month's wait, initially the inspectors said it was ok. MLC building".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Richard Peebles as close as he can get to his Manchester Courts which has just been awarded a demolition permit after a month's wait, initially the inspectors said it was ok. MLC building".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Richard Peebles as close as he can get to his Manchester Courts which has just been awarded a demolition permit after a month's wait, initially the inspectors said it was ok. MLC building".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Richard Peebles as close as he can get to his Manchester Courts which has just been awarded a demolition permit after a month's wait, initially the inspectors said it was ok. MLC building".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Richard Peebles is further concerned over the Manchester Courts building, which was severely damaged in the September earthquake and has now become more unstable. There is talk to move the cordons further back".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Richard Peebles is further concerned over the Manchester Courts building, which was severely damaged in the September earthquake and has now become more unstable. There is talk to move the cordons further back".
A view of Manchester Street, looking south, from the corner of Manchester Street and Hereford Street. On the left is the former site of the Manchester Courts building, and on the right the former site of Cash Converters.
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Cranmer Court residents Kristin Hollis (left) and Rod McKay talk to Australian heritage architects Edward Clode and Barney Collis about the earthquake damage to the old buildings, which have been converted into apartments".
The Cranmer Court building, on the corner of Kilmore and Montreal Streets, after the 22 February 2011 earthquake. Large pieces of the building have collapsed, including the octagonal corner section that housed Plato Creative from March 2008 to November 2009. Masonry has fallen onto the footpath and road, and the site has been enclosed in a safety fence to keep people away. The whitewashed interior walls of one of the apartments can be seen.
One landscape colour digital photograph taken on 19 November 2011 showing the site of the Albion Hotel/ Ground Delicatessen. After the demolition of the building the site was used for a Gap Filler initiative called the Lyttelton Petanque Club. The photograph shows the temporary furniture, landscaping and public Petanque court. The site formerl...
One landscape colour digital photograph taken on 19 November 2011 showing the site of the old Lyttelton Library, Council Chambers and Magistrates' Court on the corner of Oxford Street and Sumner Road. At the time of the 22 February 2011 Earthquake the building was in private ownership and was the premises of Moda Fotografica and a private resid...
A Christchurch man with terminal cancer is using his final days to battle his insurance company, a decade on from the deadly earthquakes. Brian Shaw owns an apartment that's in a block of 11. They were all damaged in 2011. Shaw is a building consent officer. He says getting technical reports and chasing a settlement with insurer Vero has already cost the unit owners about $400,000, and they still have not even made it to court. On Friday morning he will be protesting outside Vero's Christchurch office, along with other unhappy customers.
In September 2010 and February 2011 the Canterbury region of New Zealand was struck by two powerful earthquakes, registering magnitude 7.1 and 6.3 respectively on the Richter scale. The second earthquake was centred 10 kilometres south-east of the centre of Christchurch (the region’s capital and New Zealand’s third most populous urban area, with approximately 360,000 residents) at a depth of five kilometres. 185 people were killed, making it the second deadliest natural disaster in New Zealand’s history. (66 people were killed in the collapse of one building alone, the six-storey Canterbury Television building.) The earthquake occurred during the lunch hour, increasing the number of people killed on footpaths and in buses and cars by falling debris. In addition to the loss of life, the earthquake caused catastrophic damage to both land and buildings in Christchurch, particularly in the central business district. Many commercial and residential buildings collapsed in the tremors; others were damaged through soil liquefaction and surface flooding. Over 1,000 buildings in the central business district were eventually demolished because of safety concerns, and an estimated 70,000 people had to leave the city after the earthquakes because their homes were uninhabitable. The New Zealand Government declared a state of national emergency, which stayed in force for ten weeks. In 2014 the Government estimated that the rebuild process would cost NZ$40 billion (approximately US$27.3 billion, a cost equivalent to 17% of New Zealand’s annual GDP). Economists now estimate it could take the New Zealand economy between 50 and 100 years to recover. The earthquakes generated tens of thousands of insurance claims, both against private home insurance companies and against the New Zealand Earthquake Commission, a government-owned statutory body which provides primary natural disaster insurance to residential property owners in New Zealand. These ranged from claims for hundreds of millions of dollars concerning the local port and university to much smaller claims in respect of the thousands of residential homes damaged. Many of these insurance claims resulted in civil proceedings, caused by disputes about policy cover, the extent of the damage and the cost and/or methodology of repairs, as well as failures in communication and delays caused by the overwhelming number of claims. Disputes were complicated by the fact that the Earthquake Commission provides primary insurance cover up to a monetary cap, with any additional costs to be met by the property owner’s private insurer. Litigation funders and non-lawyer claims advocates who took a percentage of any insurance proceeds also soon became involved. These two factors increased the number of parties involved in any given claim and introduced further obstacles to resolution. Resolving these disputes both efficiently and fairly was (and remains) central to the rebuild process. This created an unprecedented challenge for the justice system in Christchurch (and New Zealand), exacerbated by the fact that the Christchurch High Court building was itself damaged in the earthquakes, with the Court having to relocate to temporary premises. (The High Court hears civil claims exceeding NZ$200,000 in value (approximately US$140,000) or those involving particularly complex issues. Most of the claims fell into this category.) This paper will examine the response of the Christchurch High Court to this extraordinary situation as a case study in innovative judging practices and from a jurisprudential perspective. In 2011, following the earthquakes, the High Court made a commitment that earthquake-related civil claims would be dealt with as swiftly as the Court's resources permitted. In May 2012, it commenced a special “Earthquake List” to manage these cases. The list (which is ongoing) seeks to streamline the trial process, resolve quickly claims with precedent value or involving acute personal hardship or large numbers of people, facilitate settlement and generally work proactively and innovatively with local lawyers, technical experts and other stakeholders. For example, the Court maintains a public list (in spreadsheet format, available online) with details of all active cases before the Court, listing the parties and their lawyers, summarising the facts and identifying the legal issues raised. It identifies cases in which issues of general importance have been or will be decided, with the expressed purpose being to assist earthquake litigants and those contemplating litigation and to facilitate communication among parties and lawyers. This paper will posit the Earthquake List as an attempt to implement innovative judging techniques to provide efficient yet just legal processes, and which can be examined from a variety of jurisprudential perspectives. One of these is as a case study in the well-established debate about the dialogic relationship between public decisions and private settlement in the rule of law. Drawing on the work of scholars such as Hazel Genn, Owen Fiss, David Luban, Carrie Menkel-Meadow and Judith Resnik, it will explore the tension between the need to develop the law through the doctrine of precedent and the need to resolve civil disputes fairly, affordably and expeditiously. It will also be informed by the presenter’s personal experience of the interplay between reported decisions and private settlement in post-earthquake Christchurch through her work mediating insurance disputes. From a methodological perspective, this research project itself gives rise to issues suitable for discussion at the Law and Society Annual Meeting. These include the challenges in empirical study of judges, working with data collected by the courts and statistical analysis of the legal process in reference to settlement. September 2015 marked the five-year anniversary of the first Christchurch earthquake. There remains widespread dissatisfaction amongst Christchurch residents with the ongoing delays in resolving claims, particularly insurers, and the rebuild process. There will continue to be challenges in Christchurch for years to come, both from as-yet unresolved claims but also because of the possibility of a new wave of claims arising from poor quality repairs. Thus, a final purpose of presenting this paper at the 2016 Meeting is to gain the benefit of other scholarly perspectives and experiences of innovative judging best practice, with a view to strengthening and improving the judicial processes in Christchurch. This Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association in New Orleans is a particularly appropriate forum for this paper, given the recent ten year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the plenary session theme of “Natural and Unnatural Disasters – human crises and law’s response.” The presenter has a personal connection with this theme, as she was a Fulbright scholar from New Zealand at New York University in 2005/2006 and participated in the student volunteer cleanup effort in New Orleans following Katrina. http://www.lawandsociety.org/NewOrleans2016/docs/2016_Program.pdf
Tax, water and housing concerns were all debated at length by Bill English and Jacinda Ardern in last night's TVNZ leaders debate. The debate came just an hour after shock 1 News Colmar Brunton poll put Labour out in front. There have been fires and explosions at a flood damaged chemical plant near Houston forcing the evacuation of people in nearby homes. A block of flats in Aro Street has been evacuated after a large slip has come down behind it. After heavy rains and flooding a Mumbai building has collapsed, killing at least 23 people. Biosecurity officials say they expect to decide by the end of the year whether they will need to order the destruction of dairy herds to wipe out a cow disease that's broken out in the South Island. It's been revealed that not a single one of New Zealand's 315 police buildings constructed before 2011 have had a full earthquake safety check. People who've bought houses in Canterbury since the September 2010 earthquake and are still battling with insurance companies over repairs, have been told that if they want to take the matter to court, today is their last chance. The Government has begun urgent talks with Australia over the Queensland's state government's "discriminatory" trade policy which takes effect today. Trade Minister Todd McClay joins us.
TODD McCLAY to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received on progress in building a faster-growing economy? GRANT ROBERTSON to the Prime Minister: Does he have confidence in his Ministers; if so, why? Dr PAUL HUTCHISON to the Minister of Health: What progress can he report on the numbers of patients receiving elective surgery? JACINDA ARDERN to the Minister for Social Development: Does she stand by her answer to oral questions on Tuesday that "There is in New Zealand no actual poverty line" and "I do not see the measurement as a priority"? Dr RUSSEL NORMAN to the Prime Minister: Does he agree with the statement made by the Hon Bill English, in relation to the release of Natasha Fuller's private details by his Social Development Minister, that, "People who enter into public debate are welcome to do so … and should provide their full information to the public"? CHRIS AUCHINVOLE to the Minister of Broadcasting: What percentage of households in Hawkes Bay and on the West Coast of the South Island have gone digital ahead of the digital switchover in these regions on 30 September? CHARLES CHAUVEL to the Minister of Justice: What assistance will be available to families unable to afford the fee of over $900 she proposes to introduce in order to access the new Family Dispute Resolution Service? JOHN HAYES to the Minister for Courts: In light of the opening of the temporary courthouse in Masterton last week, what is the range of services that courts can now offer in Masterton? DENIS O'ROURKE to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery: Was restoration of the Christchurch Cathedral included in the Christchurch Central City Recovery Plan; if not, why not? SUE MORONEY to the Minister of Women's Affairs: Is she satisfied with the action this Government has taken to improve the lives of women in New Zealand? JAN LOGIE to the Minister for Social Development: Is she concerned that Wellington Rape Crisis is shutting its doors one day a week because of funding shortfalls? IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY to the Minister of Transport: Which commuter rail services, if any, do not receive funding from the New Zealand Transport Agency?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her Government’s policies and actions? KIRITAPU ALLAN to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he seen on the need for innovation in the New Zealand economy? Hon AMY ADAMS to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree with the Prime Minister’s comment, “I absolutely believe that our agenda will grow the economy, will make sure businesses are in a position to grow and prosper, because I need that economic growth to be able to lift the well-being of all New Zealanders”? Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH to the Minister for Economic Development: Does he still think the ANZ survey of business confidence is junk? Dr DUNCAN WEBB to the Minister of Justice: What recent announcements has he made about the Family Court? Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE to the Minister of Immigration: Does he stand by all of his statements and actions? JONATHAN YOUNG to the Minister of Energy and Resources: What advice, if any, did she receive in respect of the obligation to act in accordance with the Minerals Programme for Petroleum regarding the Government’s decision to offer no new offshore permits? ANDREW BAYLY to the Minister for Building and Construction: What procedures, if any, will she put into place to ensure Government agencies adhere to MBIE’s Government procurement guidelines for construction projects? Hon Dr NICK SMITH to the Minister of Justice: Does he stand by all of his statements on the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill and the potential chilling effect it will have on the expression of dissenting views? CHRIS BISHOP to the Minister of Internal Affairs: Does she stand by all her statements around the Government inquiry into the appointment of the Deputy Commissioner of Police? Dr LIZ CRAIG to the Minister of Health: What confidence can the public take from the review of the National Bowel Screening Programme that was released this morning? STUART SMITH to the Minister of Justice: What advice, if any, has he received on the need for the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal?