Land Class Action Heads to Court of Appeal - 11 & 12 June 2025

The judgment of Paulsen on 14 December 2023 aproved the EQC Land class action against EQC (now renamed NHC), however it was not on the terms sought with the judgement excluding many homeowners including those with Increased Flooding Claims (IFV), as well as those with assigned claims, from being part of the class. It was felt that excluding these groups of homeowners was wrong and the plaintiffs appealed these parts of the judgment.

EQC / NHC have also appealed the judgment claiming that the common issues will not advance individual claims, that the plaintiffs claim is meritless and that certain arguments are time-barred (essentially they are trying to stop the class action from proceeding).

The appeal of the judgment approving the EQC Land class action will be heard in the Court of Appeal on the 11th and 12th June 2025. Both sides have filed submissions in support of their appeal, as well as submissions opposing the others submissions of their appeal. These submissions can be found in the 'Documents' tab.

EQC should pay the full cost to reinstate your land

Prior to the Canterbury earthquakes, EQC had never settled land claims based on 'diminution of value' (DOV), it always settled on the actual cost of reinstatement.  Even for the Canterbury earthquakes, EQC paid the cost of the reinstatement for all other land damage types other than increased liquefaction vulnerability (ILV) and increased flooding vulnerability (IFV).

EQC's lawyers at the time, Chapman Tripp, recommended DOV as a measure of loss, as a way to minimise payments to homeowners.  The quote below is from EQC's own geotechnical engineers, Tonkin + Taylor.

"DoV was a construct of the lawyers acting for EQC who did not believe EQC customers should receive windfall gains when land was damaged by liquefaction, but not lost, and could still be utilised by EQC customers. In particular DoV pertained to new categories of land damage, namely Increased Liquefaction vulnerability (ILV) and Increased Flood Vulnerability (IFV)."

Once this EQC Land class action is certified by the Court there will be qualifying criteria that homeowners will need to meet.  In the meantime, we recommend that you register now and we can keep you up to date as the claim progresses.

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What is this EQC Land class action about?

The representative plaintiff (representing all of the homeowners) is arguing that EQC should have paid the cost to reinstate the land to the value of the cap (as set out in s19 of the Earthquake Commission Act 1993).  It says EQC was wrong to pay a substantially lesser amount calculated by EQC using its DOV methodology.

EQC says that it has fulfilled its statutory obligation by paying for the land damage based on its DOV methodology.  It says this claim is a direct challenge to the High Court declaratory judgment in Earthquake Commission v Insurance Council of New Zealand Inc in 2014.  We believe that the declaratory judgment contains a number of errors which need to be corrected, and if need be, challenged through to the appropriate Court.

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What does it cost?

It costs you nothing to register and registering does not obligate you to anything.

If in the future you receive a settlement as a result of the class action, the litigation funder will charge a fee.  This fee will be determined by the Court based on an application made to it.

You will never be asked to pay any money up front or pay for a share of any costs – it’s simply a deduction off any amount you are entitled to receive once the class action is resolved.  

Frequenty asked questions

Further information about the claim

If you have questions about this class action, please contact us and one of our team will be in touch with you.