NRL Overview

We know what it is like to be in your situation and so we decided to create a service which we would have used and been happy with if it had been available.

The service had to be a win-win solution for all of the parties involved and also had to be ethical and honest.

This site is mainly words and documents but it has to be this way so that you have as much information as possible before you take your first step.

Most importantly please give yourself a break as it’s not your fault that some professionals are using their insurance policies and relying on the high cost of legal action to reduce the chance of anyone challenging their negligence thereby allowing them to do what they want.

This is also made worse by many insurance policies also covering the professional for misrepresentation.

Please take your time to look thru the site and read everything – you can email us if you have any questions.

This photo was taken on day 1 of our 10 day trial in the High Court in 2019.

Our Goal is to give everyone a chance for justice

After making a claim for negligence against our trusted professional Gabrielle and I developed this service so that victims of professionals hiding behind their insurance cover could have a level playing field.

We’ve built a network of lawyers willing to represent you if they think you have a case and you are happy with their offer.

Our goal is to create a level playing field for victims of Negligence.

When you took the time to choose your professional little did you know that they had Professional Indemnity Insurance cover which was there to protect them if they were negligent or guilty of misrepresentation?

This effectively meant that if they weren’t honest about what they were saying or didn’t do a proper job, they would be protected by their insurance company right or wrong and you would then be dealing with their insurer’s lawyers instead of your professional.

This photo is of the three of us at the presentation of Paige's Kiwi Bank Local Hero Award.

Why is there so much Information?

There are a number of pages for you to visit and also some documents for you to read.

Part of the registration process is for you to confirm that you have read all of the documents in our Library.

You can email us if you have any questions, or you can ask your lawyer when you meet with them. We’ll send you the links to the documents in your 1st email when you register.

The only thing that we hide at NRL is the identity of the lawyers who have signed onto our service – everything else is fully disclosed.

What are the Costs Involved?

The basics of the service are very straight forward.

Please note that there may be some variation to the lawyer's fees according to the rules in your country as not all countries are the same.

Please discuss this with your lawyer remembering that you only proceed if both you and your lawyer are happy with the terms.

Who are we?

Gabrielle and I, along with our daughter Paige own and run Negligence Resolutions Limited (or NRL.)We live in a small town called Rolleston, 15 minutes south of Christchurch, New Zealand on a 5.5 hectare lifestyle block which also has a large shed on it from which we run our Air Freshener manufacturing business, Bradfield Marketing. www.Bradfieldmarketing.com

I’m a qualified accountant and Gabrielle has extensive sales experience. Paige is currently studying to become a lawyer and is also doing a marketing degree at the same time.

This photo is of the three of us at Paige’s presentation of a Kiwibank Local Hero Award.

What started the creation of NRL?

The purchase of the Air Freshener/Petcare business lead to the creation of NRL. The vendor of the business misrepresented the need for government permits for their Petcare products and our lawyers failed to carry out proper legal due diligence. The cost for us to get all of the required permits is over $10 million and the need for these permits should have been found by our lawyers. It also meant that we lost 50% of our business overnight as it was illegal to sell the products. It took us 4 years to have the matter heard in Court and decided on.

In the end we turned down the settlement offers made by our lawyer’s insurer as the Court documents at the time the offers were made included (as their primary defence) the claim that Gabrielle had waived our right to Solicitors Approval and as such we did not have a case. We denied this, as did the lawyer they said had made the claim. After our lawyers wrote to them pointing out the issue they kept the claim in their Statement of Defence until the week before Court. This whole issue was deemed to have been the result of an administrative error. It did however greatly impact on our decision to refuse their offers and this impacted on the costs we were awarded.

The sad thing is that this appears to be normal practice for the insurance company’s lawyers normally applying the three D’s of:

Deny - so that you will have to spend time and money proving your claim,

Delay - drag the process out for as long as possible hoping that you will run out of money, and

Defend - also with a view to have you run out of money.

In our case we were the first defendants that the insurance company’s lawyers had had to defend against in Court even though their last offer was three weeks out from the hearing. In fairness to the insurance company, our vendor was also a party to the case and he was in denial that there was a case to be heard as he thought that white lies caused no damage and were acceptable.

This is a box of our air fresheners which I am pleased to say are far better than we were told they were – they can last for months and are used by commerical cleaners in vaccum cleaners to fragrance the rooms as they clean as well as car owners to make their cars smell better.

They underestimated us - Point 1

We live in Christchurch, a city which has experienced two catastrophic events: the earthquakes and mosque attacks in recent times.

People who live in Christchurch are above all resilient. Prior to the earthquake in 2010, we had experienced an earthquake twenty years earlier. We stood in our garage doorway and watched our driveway move up and down in a rolling wave motion. We had a few aftershocks over the next few days and that was the end of it. The September 2010 earthquake was violent and we had 1000’s of aftershocks including the 2011 earthquake which killed 185 people.

Paige was at university when the 2019 mosque shootings occurred and was locked down. We were overseas and could only watch from a distance. We did however get to experience the anger and disbelief of others, where we were, about the event in Christchurch.

Most people in Christchurch either knew a victim or were familiar with the locations. The police used common sense and captured the person within 15 minutes and justice was seen in 2020 in the Christchurch High Court, a building very familiar to us because of our 10 day hearing.

They under estimated us - Point 2

The second point that they overlooked was that all three of us are members of Rotary International. They had done their research on us and underestimated what it means to be a Rotarian.

Gabrielle and I joined the Lincoln Rotary Club in 2011 after we moved to Rolleston as we wanted to make a contribution to our new community. Paige decided to join in 2019 after she had attended RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards) which is a week-long residential course for leaders of the future.

Rotary has over 1.2 million members and over 35,000 clubs in over 200 countries and every district runs an annual RYLA course.

Rotarians prescribe to ethical and honest behaviour in business and relationships and apply a Four-way Test to decisions in their lives:

1. Is it the TRUTH?
2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?
3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

Gabrielle and I are proud to be associated with Rotary International as is our daughter Paige who is at 20 the youngest Rotarian in our District.

If you wish to thank us after you have used NRL and resolved your legal issue, do so by checking out your local Rotary Club and getting involved in your community.

https://www.rotary.org/

We believe that Negligence Resolutions follows these principals and more importantly that these guidelines should be used more in business and life. You will notice that when you apply to use the service that you receive all of the Client and Lawyer documentation – it is because we believe that it is only fair and ethical that you can see all of the information before using our service.

We refused their settlement offers because we were accepting that it was OK to lie in Court documents and not be thorough in your checking of evidence. As far as we were concerned we ethically and morally could not accept their offers in light of the major error in their evidence. This decision was not made lightly and cost us $100,000’s, but it also meant that we had a clear conscience and could sleep well at night.

Did we win our case?

YES we did!

In July 2019 we went to the High Court in Christchurch. The hearing took 10 days as our trusted professional had failed to carry out the duties we required during Due Diligence.

You can read our judgement at the following link - https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/pdf/jdo/e6/alfresco/service/api/node/content/workspace/SpacesStore/00f73bcd-40b0-44db-a84a-006135838840/00f73bcd-40b0-44db-a84a-006135838840.pdf

Paige took this photo of us on the morning of our first day in High Court.

Would we have used our service if it had it been available?

Yes!

Aside from the financial cost of the case, our thoughts are that the case would have been resolved quicker as our lawyer would have been focused on resolution so they could get paid. We had expected the case to be resolved within one year at less than 20% of the actual costs.

We knew from the outset that our case was complicated as there were multiple parties – our Lawyer and the Vendor we purchased the business off, and multiple points of law.

We had used the Managing Partner and his Associate from a well-respected law firm in our city, in fact the firm was the first to reopen offices in the city centre after the earthquakes.

The Vendor we purchased the business off refused to accept the facts as laid out by our experts and his experts which delayed matters.

The lawyers appointed by the insurance company to represent the lawyers we had engaged to carry out due diligence for us chose a defence which had no grounds. From November 2017 – May 2019 they said that Gabrielle had waived our right to solicitor’s approval which was a condition of the sale and purchase agreement. They said that, based on a word written on notes of a meeting held between Gabrielle and the Associate, we had waived our solicitor’s approval and that there was no case to be heard.

The “notes” were supplied to us with the lawyers Statement of Defence. Gabrielle denied this as it was ridiculous that she would waive our rights days out from settling the purchase of the business plus she said the conversation never took place. The lawyers aggressively pursued this defence until May 2019 when the Associate submitted her Brief of Evidence denying that the incident ever took place. The lawyers then failed to change their Statement of Defence until the week before the trial in late July 2019. Had the lawyers checked with the Managing Partner and Associate before including the evidence in the Statement of Defence, they would have realised that they had no case and a settlement could have been reached.

Instead a stressful situation was created for Gabrielle and me where Gabrielle’s personal integrity was attacked.

Using NRL would have made our lives easier as we would not have had monthly lawyer’s invoices and the case would have been resolved quicker – we believe as our lawyer would have had a vested interest in the case.

Why did we create Negligence Resolutions?

The high cost of taking actions to recover damages due to a professional’s negligence.

The actions of the lawyers in our court case.

The action of four lawyers - a Managing Partner, Partner, Senior Associate and Associate from our original law firm and the insurance company’s lawyers helped with the creation of NRL because they were allowed to aggressively pursue a lie which they had failed to fact check. We were told that the claim and evidence was included due to an administrative error – one that they aggressively pursued for 18 months. We believe that their goal was to get us to run out of money and give up the case by denying, delaying and defending the case. This action cost us $100,000’s in extra fees and disbursements and meant that we had to have 10 days in the High Court.

A statement made by a user of professional indemnity cover.

Gabrielle sat next to the accountant for an international real estate company on a flight one day. As she had just spent a couple of days at a Youth Law conference with Paige the subject of lawyers and insurance was discussed.

He stated that Professional Indemnity cover was their agent’s best friend as the chances of a claim being made against them was so low, it didn’t matter, due to the cost of taking an agent to task. This upset me as these agents were knowingly being negligent and making misrepresentations because the price of legal action was too high.

We believe that it is unethical and unfair that professionals use these policies as a tool for doing a poor job.

Why are we concerned with levelling the legal playing field?

The current situation is that a professional can insure themselves against legal action for their negligence and they will be represented by a lawyer appointed to them by their insurance company whether they are right or in the wrong. We believe that the insurance company lawyers are then looking after the best interests of their clients – the insurance companies.

We have created a service so that you can get representation and action with your claim from a lawyer with a vested interest in your success as they and we only get paid if you get a payment from the other party. You are now on a level playing field.

Were we happy with our lawyer’s efforts?

Yes!

Our lawyers charged us by the hour which is what we signed up for.Neither of us expected the case to drag out for four years and for their fees to be so high. We believe that the other parties took the point of view that we would give up and that the issue would disappear. We took issue with this and stood our ground because it was morally and ethically wrong for us to be bullied out of justice.

Our lawyers helped us navigate our way to Court where they stood up and represented us. Our lawyers were also highly ethical and honest and they ensured that we played to the rules of the Court. Gabrielle and I are proud to have had them representing us in this action.Our lawyers were fantastic.

The NRL service is nearly the same as what we experienced with our lawyers except that we did not have the option of “No Win No Fee” representation. It would have been fantastic if we had this as it would have meant that our lawyers had a stake in the success of our case.

• We too had a free meeting with our lawyers to discuss our case and we took along with us a pile of evidence. After we had explained the points of our case our lawyers at that point thought that we had a case but they wanted to first review the case and provide us with a written opinion before they would agree to represent us.
• The next step was for us to have our lawyers review our case and give us a written opinion. Our lawyers obtained our file from our previous lawyers and reviewed it and the case. They then wanted a further second opinion from an expert barrister before they would decide.
• Once they had given us their opinion and received the opinion of their expert, they decided whether or not they would take on our case. With NRL lawyers agree to take on your case for a % of any settlement, whereas our lawyers agreed to take on our case for a fee per hour. In your case you have to be happy with the % bearing in mind that your lawyers don’t get paid if there is no settlement and in our case we had to be happy to pay for their service.
• Whether we settled out of Court or won damages in Court Gabrielle and I got to keep all of the money, we also got to pay all of the costs and in our case a large chunk of the other parties as well because of our refusal to accept their settlement offers. In your case if you receive a settlement you get to share it with your lawyer and also give NRL 2.5%, but if you don’t win or get a settlement you will receive nothing – in our case we still would have had to pay the other parties costs if we had lost.
• I think that NRL offers you a fantastic opportunity to get justice which is affordable, ethical and honest as your lawyer and us both share the risk of your failure. You can’t imagine how great it would have been to have had our lawyers on a No Win No Fee basis with our only upfront cost being the cost for them to review our case which would have to be done either way – this also shows your lawyer that you are willing to have some skin in the game. A good month for us was $10,000 in fees and Gabrielle’s inheritance allowed us to do this. Our worst month was over $100,000 and even when we did win we still had topay legal fees to have our lawyers assemble the costs and request the damages from the other parties.
• Sign up to our service and submit your case details and meet with one of the lawyers for free knowing that you both have to be happy to proceed further with your claim.

You have nothing to lose!