Tenantcheck Insights · Case study
Tenancy Tribunal case 5282599 — Tenancy dispute at 208 Forest Hill Road, Waiatarua, Auckland 0612
Decided 9 Dec 2025 · Published 9 Dec 2025 · Application 5282599
At a glance
Key facts from the published tribunal order.
Location
Auckland
Tribunal region
Claims & awards
What this tenancy cost at tribunal — claim, category, amount, and party awarded, with reconciled net total.
No individual claim amounts were reconciled for this order. View the official Ministry of Justice PDF for full detail.
Order
- The application for rehearing is dismissed.
- The order of 17 September 2025 is in full force and effect.
Reasons
- Both parties attended today’s rehearing application hearing by telephone. Ms Jodi Hammill and Ms [The party] attended, as did the landlord who was represented by Emma.
- On 17 September 2025, in all three of the tenants’ absence, the Tribunal made an order requiring Jodi Hammill, [The party] and [The party] to pay the landlord $10,160.81.
- On 21 October 2025 Jodi Hammill applied for a rehearing.
- Section 105(1) Residential Tenancies Act 1986 provides that the Tribunal has the power to order a rehearing where “a substantial wrong or miscarriage of justice has or may have occurred or is likely to occur”.
- However, s105(2) of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 provides that a rehearing application shall be lodged within 5 working days after the date of the decision.
- As explained at today’s hearing, before considering whether a substantial wrong or miscarriage of justice has occurred pursuant to s105(1), Ms Hammill must first establish a good reason for having not applied for a rehearing in accordance with the provisions of s105(2) – that is, within 5 working days of 17 September 2025. Ms Hammill’s application for a rehearing was dated 21 October 2025.
- At today’s hearing Ms Hammill stated that she had taken so long to apply for a rehearing because: (a) She did not have a working phone for a period of 4 weeks. She got a new phone 2 days before applying for a rehearing – ie on 19 October 2025; and (b) She went to the CAB for legal advice. At today’s hearing she established that she went to CAB on 22 October 2025 and I heard from both Sapphire and Jodi that she had gone to another CAB 1-2 weeks prior to this date but she was unable to be seen; and (c) She has no working car; and (d) Sapphire advised the hearing that she usually helps her mother with these types of things but was unable to do so because she works and has other responsibilities.
- In Ms Hammill’s written application for a rehearing the reasons she put down for applying out of time were because: (a) She had been caring for her father for 23 years and he passed away in September 2024; and (b) Her best friend had passed away 5 months prior to that; and (c) As a consequence of these 2 events she had been unable to get her head together to apply for the rehearing in a timely way.
- I am not allowing Ms Hammill’s application for a rehearing out of time.
- This is for reasons that include: (a) The screen shot that Ms Hammill provided as evidence of her not receiving a call on the day of the hearing, showed that she had a working phone from at least 22 August 2025 to 3 October 2025. This means that she had a working phone to apply for a rehearing within 5 working days of 17 September 2025, the date of the decision; and (b) Ms Hamill went to CAB well after the time within which she ought to have applied for a rehearing. Attending CAB is not a justification for applying for a rehearing out of time; and (c) I cannot see how not having a working car impacts on the timeliness of making an application for a rehearing which can be done online; and (d) Working and having other responsibilities is a fact of every day life. It is not a factor that is out of the ordinary and therefore cannot be regarded as justification for applying for a rehearing more than a month after the hearing date; and (e) While I acknowledge Ms Hamill’s grief at the passing of her father and best friend in 2024, in order for this to be taken into account as a justification for applying for a rehearing out of time, there needs to be some other kind of objective evidence that supports the notion that this grief significantly impacted her decision making in September 2025. No such objective evidence was provided.
- Given that I am not allowing Ms Hamill’s application for a rehearing out of time, it is not now open to me to consider whether a “substantial wrong or miscarriage of justice has or may have occurred or is likely to occur” as provided by s105(1). As stated earlier, I can only consider s105(1) once Ms Hamill has persuaded me that she had a good reason for applying out of time. She has not done so and therefore I cannot consider s105(1). C ter Haar 09 December 2025