{"id":12759,"date":"2025-02-20T06:23:51","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T17:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=12759"},"modified":"2025-02-20T06:23:51","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T17:23:51","slug":"transmission-gully-nzta-spent-600k-on-legal-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=12759","title":{"rendered":"Transmission Gully: NZTA spent $600k on legal battle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NZTA Waka Kotahi estimates it spent more than $600,000 on external lawyers for a legal battle with the builders of Transmission Gully, which was later settled out of court.<\/p>\n<p>Transmission Gully &#8211; a $1.25 billion motorway north of Wellington &#8211; opened to the public in March 2022 after years of delays.<\/p>\n<p>The road was built under a Public Private Partnership (PPP) contract between the Wellington Gateway Partnership and builders CPB Contractors Pty Ltd and HEB Construction Ltd.<\/p>\n<p>In November 2023, more than a year after cars were allowed to drive on it the builders of the motorway filed legal proceedings in the High Court against NZTA Waka Kotahi.<\/p>\n<p>The dispute related to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/501453\/waka-kotahi-back-in-court-over-claims-of-incomplete-work-on-transmission-gully\">unfinished construction and quality checks<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>At the time the agency said the legal proceedings were filed in response to their expectations works were completed to the &#8220;project&#8217;s contracted standards&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>In December the agency announced it had settled the dispute out of court.<\/p>\n<p>RNZ can reveal while the work on the dispute was underway, NZTA Waka Kotahi spent an estimated $630,000 on external legal costs relating to it.<\/p>\n<p>This included work by the Bell Gully law firm, and lawyers Hugh Kettle and Mike Colson KC.<\/p>\n<p>The legal costs related to NZTA Waka Kotahi&#8217;s initial pleadings, initial case management, attendance for discovery, responses to requests by media for access to the Court file and attendances which related to settlement.<\/p>\n<p>The settlement resulted in a restructure of the project&#8217;s PPP which gave NZTA Waka Kotahi responsibility for work that needed to be completed and involved it taking a more significant role in ongoing operations and maintenance.<\/p>\n<p>It also allowed CPB Contractors Pty Ltd and HEB Construction Ltd to exit the project.<\/p>\n<p>NZTA commercial delivery national manager Andrew Robertson said at the time it removed uncertainty that a lengthy legal battle would bring.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Quite simply, it allows us to move forward with certainty.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The settlement did not affect road users and did not increase the cost of Transmission Gully to taxpayers.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NZTA Waka Kotahi estimates it spent more than $600,000 on external lawyers for a legal battle with the builders of Transmission Gully, which was later settled out of court. Transmission Gully &#8211; a $1.25 billion motorway north of Wellington &#8211; opened to the public in March 2022 after years of delays. The road was built [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12761,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12759\/revisions\/12761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}