James Hardie blames 'atrocious' workmanship for failure of its Harditex cladding

Wednesday, 19 May 2021

A $220m class action claims cladding was sold without adequate testing, but it ended after only a few weeks with a settlement which was a win for the respondent James Hardie.

One of the leaky homes in the Harditex cladding class action lawsuit was atrociously built, and did not even have a code of compliance certificate, James Hardie’s lawyers claimed at the High Court in Auckland.

The global building materials manufacturer is defending itself against a $220 million class action claim for compensation by owners of leaky homes clad in Harditex.

About 1000 owners of 376 leaky homes blame James Hardie’s Harditex exterior cladding system for the leaks, claiming Harditex was defective, not suitable for New Zealand’s high-rain climate, and not properly tested before being sold.

But James Hardie’s says as many as 100,000 buildings in New Zealand had been built using Harditex, which was withdrawn from the market in 2005, and that bad building, and “cheap and shoddy“ workmanship, not defects in Harditex, was the cause of leaks.

* Leaky home owners seek $220 million in damages from James Hardie

* James Hardie 'knew cladding not working', High Court told

About 1000 owners, and former owners, of leaky homes are suing building materials maker James Hardie for about $220million at the High Court in Auckland.

James Hardie’s lawyer Jack Hodder, QC, told the court on Tuesday: “It was a very successful product with a successful performance history in the field with a low failure rate.”

Bruce Scott, another member of James Hardie’s legal team, said on Wednesday that none of the homes the court would be shown by the plaintiffs provided evidence that Harditex was a flawed product.

Instead, each showed numerous failures in workmanship by builders, Scott said.

“None of the properties provide a proper test of the Harditex system,” Scott said.

Scott told Justice Christian Whata that one of the homes, in Milford, Auckland, was never given a code compliance certificate.

He said the builder did not follow the consented plans, switched the material for the windows, and used Harditex when another cladding was consented in the plans.

Harditex had not been installed on the home in accordance with the James Hardie’s technical installation instructions, Scott said.

“If the builder had the [instructions] with him, he certainly didn’t pay any attention to them,” Scott said.

He described some of the workmanship on the home as “atrocious”.

James Hardie’s experts did not have access to some of the properties because they had been sold, and in several cases buildings were reclad before the case began, Scott said.

The third member of the James Hardie’s legal team, John McKay, said Harditex was one of a suite of durable products made from portland cement, wood fibre, and sand.

The development of cellulose-based fibre cement boards went back as far as the 1940s, and had involved extensive testing, he said.

“There’s a lot of science behind this, with a lot of people working to get it right,” McKay said.

Harditex, which was made in James Hardie’s 12-hectare factory in Auckland, complied with New Zealand cement board manufacturing standards, he said.

It was not prone to warping, cracking, or delamination except when badly installed, and not properly maintained, McKay said.

On Monday, the homeowners suing James Hardie had pointed to open-air exposure tests conducted on Harditex in Allunga, Australia, where the cladding boards virtually disintegrate after five years.

But McKay said those tests were on non-coated Harditex boards, exposed at a 45 degree angle, and that four metres of rain fell every year in the tropical heat of Allunga, near Townsville, Queensland, which was more than three times the annual rainfall of Auckland.

When properly installed, and covered with a suitable coating, the Harditex cellulose-based fibre cement boards were a durable product for home-building, McKay said.

McKay said the homeowners’ claim that cement fibre boards were simply a bad idea, and an inherently-flawed concept, was not correct.

He said the Harditex “improvement” project launched by James Hardie in 1999, referred to on Tuesday by homeowners’ lawyer Simon Hughes, was not evidence Harditex was defective.

“Improving something does not mean the predecessor was defective,” McKay said.

He said internal James Hardie documents cited by Hughes relating to Harditex were the sign of a “healthy debate” within James Hardie.

“That’s a good sign from a responsible manufacturer,” McKay said.