Tenantcheck Insights · Case study
Tenancy Tribunal case 5369502 — Tenancy dispute
Decided 12 Mar 2026 · Published 12 Mar 2026 · Application 5369502
- Property damage
Party names are redacted in the official published order. This page summarises the dispute only — not individual identities.
At a glance
Key facts from the published tribunal order.
Adjudicator
K Koller
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 Tribunal orders suppression of the names and identifying details.
- [The tenant/s]’s application against [The landlord/s] is dismissed.
Reasons
- [The tenant/s] and [The landlord/s] attended the hearing. The matter was set down for a case conference to decide if the Tribunal has jurisdiction.
- [The tenant/s] wants [The landlord/s], who is the owner of the house, to pay compensation because a branch fell off a tree and damaged his car while he was living there. [The tenant/s] did not have insurance. [The landlord/s]’s insurance will not cover the damage because it was an ‘act of god’.
- Section 77(1) Residential Tenancies Act 1986 (RTA) provides that the Tribunal has jurisdiction to hear claims between landlords and tenants relating to any tenancy to which the Act applies. Section 2(1) RTA defines a landlord as the grantor of a tenancy under a tenancy agreement of residential premises. A tenant is the grantee of the tenancy.
- [The landlord/s] has a tenancy agreement with her tenant, [The resident]. [The resident] has lived at the house for a number of years, usually with her children. [The tenant/s] moved into the house in July 2025 and lived there for a few months. He understood that [The resident] was the head tenant, and he joined the house as her flatmate. He paid his rent to [The resident]. He said there was another flatmate living there at the same time. [The landlord/s] did not know that [The resident] had flatmates living in the house.
- I am not persuaded that [The landlord/s] was [The tenant/s]’s landlord, even though [The landlord/s] ultimately received the rent he paid. She was not the grantor of the tenancy. She did not even know he was living in the house. If [The landlord/s] is not the landlord then I do not have the jurisdiction to decide the application. This is because the Tenancy Tribunal only has the jurisdiction to decide claims between landlords and tenants. The application against [The landlord/s] is dismissed.
- It seems most likely to me that [The resident] was [The tenant/s]’s landlord, because she granted his tenancy. We call someone in her position a sublandlord. [The tenant/s] said at the case conference that he did not want to proceed if his claim would have to be against [The resident], and so I have withdrawn his application.
- I have used my discretion to allow suppression of the names and the tenancy address. This is because the only public interest is in the law. See section 95A RTA.