{"id":242006,"date":"2026-01-20T05:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T05:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/242006\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T05:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T05:41:08","slug":"bad-service-developers-chased-for-4-8m-get-judgment-set-aside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/242006\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad service: Developers chased for $4.8m get judgment set aside"},"content":{"rendered":"Xceda filed proceedings against a number of parties \u2013 including Wigmore and Bublitz \u2013 in December 2023. In September 2024, judgment was awarded against Wigmore and Bublitz by default for $4.8m.<\/p>\n
Xceda then began using the judgment to begin bankruptcy proceedings against the two men.<\/p>\n
Wigmore and Bublitz both claimed they were never served with the proceedings and only became aware of them when they were personally served with bankruptcy notices in December 2024.<\/p>\n
Xceda told the court it had served notice to solicitor Richard Beca, who it said had previously acted for the defendants.<\/p>\n
However, Wigmore and Bublitz said that understanding was incorrect and Beca did not act for the pair.<\/p>\n
Associate Justice Taylor noted that while Xceda had emailed Beca, it had never received a reply \u2013 including to requests to confirm that he was still authorised to accept service for the pair.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has been a miscarriage of justice. Mr Wigmore and Mr Bublitz had a judgment entered into them for in excess of $4m, and have been the subject of bankruptcy proceedings resulting from that default judgment, without the ability to defend the proceedings. There is obvious prejudice to Mr Wigmore and Mr Bublitz in these circumstances,\u201d the judgment concluded.<\/p>\n
The financial underpinnings of the dispute appear to concern Black Robin Equity\u2019s proposed development at 6 Huka Rd in Birkenhead. Advertised in 2022 as a 45-unit apartment complex to be built on vacant land, Black Robin went into liquidation in September 2024.<\/p>\n
Wigmore is Black Robin\u2019s sole director.<\/p>\n
Liquidator Kevyn Botes said the property was now \u201ceffectively controlled by the mortgagee\u201d but a mortgagee auction had failed to attract a single offer.<\/p>\n
\u201cDiscussions with the agent appointed by the mortgagee reveal little interest for land of this nature which is very steep and is likely to be expensive to develop,\u201d the report said of the section.<\/p>\n
There had been discussion about the land being sold and repurposed for a retirement community, but this had not eventuated.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrior to liquidation of the company, the directors were dealing with a potential investor to acquire the property, but it is the writer\u2019s view that this is essentially going nowhere,\u201d Botes said.<\/p>\n
Matt Nippert is an Auckland-based investigations reporter covering white-collar and transnational crimes and the intersection of politics and business. He has won more than a dozen awards for his journalism \u2013 including twice being named Reporter of the Year \u2013 and joined the Herald in 2014 after having spent the decade prior reporting from business newspapers and national magazines.<\/p>\n
Stay ahead with the latest market moves, corporate updates, and economic insights by subscribing to our Business newsletter<\/a> \u2013 your essential weekly round-up of all the business news you need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Xceda filed proceedings against a number of parties \u2013 including Wigmore and Bublitz \u2013 in December 2023. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[142208,25810,15435,138,9436,20491,1656,13023,15158,24570,170,12513,13989,246,2082,1333,142209,296,21141,6148,18060,18977,37107,111,139,69,7812,2552,1551,17454],"class_list":["post-242006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-48m","tag-aside","tag-bad","tag-business","tag-chase","tag-chased","tag-company","tag-deemed","tag-default","tag-developers","tag-development","tag-failed","tag-fell","tag-finance","tag-for","tag-get","tag-guarantors","tag-into","tag-judgment","tag-justice","tag-loan","tag-miscarriage","tag-multimilliondollar","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-seen","tag-service","tag-set","tag-whose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}