Lyttelton Port $181m case against Aon now includes Colliers and Opus

Wednesday, 11 April 2018

Jetties and other assets were left out of Lyttelton Port's insurance cover.

Aon has succeeded in including Colliers and Opus in a High Court lawsuit it is defending against claims by Lyttelton Port Company.

The port company claim of $181 million against insurance broker Aon is for alleged failure to adequately insure port assets damaged in the 2010 earthquakes.

Colliers and Opus were involved in valuing port assets for Aon and the port, particularly the number one inner harbour jetty.

Lyttelton Port opposed Aon's request to include Colliers and Opus but lost, and must pay legal costs over the latest action, as all the parties now prepare for the main three month trial in the latter half of 2019.

Some of the earthquake damage at Lyttelton Port.

* AON seeks documents on $185m Lyttelton Port claim

* Lyttelton Port settle quake insurance claims**

Lyttelton Port's lawyer, Neil Campbell QC, told High Court associate judge John Matthews it was too late for Aon to try and join Colliers and Opus to the proceedings, which were filed by Lyttelton Port in 2015.

Campbell argued that including them would affect the timetable for the 2019 trial and Aon could sue Colliers and Opus in its own right later.

However Judge Matthews ruled that although delay of the trial was possible, it made much more sense to have just one trial.

'In my opinion justice between all parties can only be attained by all the issues being tried in the same proceeding. The facts must all be tried once, and once only,' Judge Matthews ruled.

All the companies had already provided their valuation files and more than 6300 documents.

Judge Matthews said the time it had taken to get to this point could have been avoided if Lyttelton Port had included Colliers and Opus from the outset as had been suggested in an earlier hearing.

In the recent High Court action, Aon's lawyer Les Taylor QC argued that if Aon was found liable for Lyttelton Port losses then Colliers was also liable because it breached a duty of care it owed to the port.

Lyttelton Port had commissioned Colliers to value assets, and Colliers in turn engaged another firm, Darroch, to carry out some of the valuations.

Aon claimed Colliers negligently failed to include several assets, or instruct Darroch to value them, and therefore Colliers compromised insurance claims under the port's material damage policy.

Aon also asked to include Opus in the court case because Lyttelton Port engaged Opus to undertake insurance valuations of a group of assets including the number one jetty.

Opus provided Lyttelton Port and and Aon with a spreadsheet containing insurance valuations, but there was no reinstatement cost estimate for number one jetty.

Aon said it used the valuations provided by Colliers and Opus in arranging material damage cover, and consequently cover was not taken for all of them.