Barfoot & Thompson is fighting the claim, alleging OLA is either solely responsible for or, at a minimum, contributed to its losses.<\/p>\n
It claimed OLA\u2019s then director gave the agent permission to copy-paste her own initials and that the builder was an \u201cexperienced property developer\u201d which understood the legal risks of property sales.<\/p>\n
OLA\u2019s claim further alleged the agent ignored both Real Estate Authority (REA) and Barfoot & Thompson\u2019s internal guidelines for valid electronic signing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe copying and pasting of signatures was done to make the contract appear uniform and avoid scrutiny by lawyers,\u201d the claim alleged the Barfoot & Thompson agent admitted during the previous trial in June.<\/p>\n
Barfoot & Thompson accepted its agent told a court he\u2019d made a mistake, but argued there was no \u201clegal requirement\u201d to follow its or the REA\u2019s electronic signature guides.<\/p>\n
Former Barfoot & Thompson real estate agent Prince Kapoor was described as one of the agency’s brightest young talents in a OneRoof article.<\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s district court case served as a reminder for all Kiwis completing electronic property transactions about what counts as a valid digital signature.<\/p>\n
Judge Kate Davenport, KC, ruled that while copy-pasting signatures could be legally valid, it is only enforceable if the method is \u201cexclusively linked\u201d to the person signing and if the action is under their direct control.<\/p>\n
Now the upcoming High Court battle could help settle who is financially responsible when digital signatures go wrong.<\/p>\n
Signed but not sealed<\/p>\n
The Mt Wellington townhouse in Barrack Rd first went on sale in 2022 as one of several units being built and sold by OLA.<\/p>\n
The sale in question involved two Barfoot & Thompson agents on opposite sides of the deal \u2013 former \u201crising star\u201d Prince Kapoor acting for the seller and colleague Huong Tuyet Tieu buying in her own right.<\/p>\n
Tieu offered $1.12m for the home via a Barfoot & Thompson internal system using DocuSign in March 2022. <\/p>\n
OLA counter-offered at $1.15m \u2013 which under contract law automatically cancelled the original offer and became the current deal under consideration.<\/p>\n
Kapoor did not advise OLA that the counter-offer cancelled the original offer.<\/p>\n
When OLA\u2019s director later agreed to sell at $1.12m, Kapoor treated it as a done deal and did not get Tieu\u2019s fresh acceptance of the original price as was necessary because the first offer had been cancelled.<\/p>\n
OLA alleged Kapoor also added a new clause and copy-pasted Tieu\u2019s DocuSign initials onto it using an iPad app called Notability rather than getting a fresh signature.<\/p>\n
Kapoor claimed Tieu knew he was copying the signatures, but Tieu denied that.<\/p>\n
Tieu paid a $56,000 deposit but later refused to pay the rest of the purchase price and never settled. <\/p>\n
The judge ruled last August that no valid contract had ever been formed.<\/p>\n
Developer OLA Homes built and put on sale a number of Auckland townhouses at 127 Barrack Rd in Mt Wellington.<\/p>\n
The $600,000 lawsuit<\/p>\n
After failing to sue the buyer, OLA instead sought to take Barfoot & Thompson to court for $600,359.96 in damages, alleging 11 points of negligence, breach of the Fair Trading Act, and breach of fiduciary duty.<\/p>\n
They included using unreliable signatures, failing to advise OLA about the counter-offer, and prioritising \u201cthe securing of its commission over the enforceability\u201d of the contract.<\/p>\n
OLA alleged Kapoor did not disclose the copy-paste method until he was cross-examined during last year\u2019s district court trial.<\/p>\n
That allegedly caused the developer to pursue a \u201cdoomed\u201d case because it had not known about Kapoor\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n
OLA said the fallout cost the company $245,000 on the resale, $205,000 in legal fees from the failed case against Tieu, and $66,078 in adverse costs.<\/p>\n
Barfoot & Thompson denied the claims. <\/p>\n
Its defence argued the real reason the deal collapsed was that Tieu simply did not have the money to settle.<\/p>\n
It cited a text exchange from around the time settlement was due. <\/p>\n
In it, Kapoor texted Tieu: \u201cu wanna lend me some money for two months on interest?\u201d. <\/p>\n
Tieu replied: \u201cI can\u2019t even settle mine. How do I have money lend u?? u shld lend me instead\u201d.<\/p>\n
The agency also argued OLA contributed to its own losses by choosing to sue Tieu and by reselling the property at an \u201cundervalue\u201d.<\/p>\n
Developer OLA Homes had to sell the 127D Barrack Rd townhouse at their Barrack Rd development in Mt Wellington for $245,000 less when the original sale deal fell through in 2022.<\/p>\n
OLA Homes declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Barfoot & Thompson and its former agent Kapoor were approached for comment.<\/p>\n
A Barfoot spokesperson said: \u201cThis matter is currently before the courts, and we are reluctant to provide detailed commentary while proceedings are ongoing. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe circumstances involved are more complex than can be reflected through responses to a limited set of questions, and it is important that the issues are considered in full through the proper legal process.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the ongoing proceedings, it would not be appropriate to comment further at this stage.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barfoot & Thompson is fighting the claim, alleging OLA is either solely responsible for or, at a minimum,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[173572,173570,74,9092,17901,28119,4496,170153,170154,170157,3468,638,9881,7324,20066,28166,111,43,139,69,814,6115,801,2543,133,8214,2737,54946,173571],"class_list":{"0":"post-321246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-600000plus","9":"tag-600k","10":"tag-after","11":"tag-against","12":"tag-agents","13":"tag-amp","14":"tag-attempt","15":"tag-barfoot","16":"tag-copypaste","17":"tag-copypasting","18":"tag-deal","19":"tag-estate","20":"tag-facing","21":"tag-lawsuit","22":"tag-milliondollar","23":"tag-mistake","24":"tag-new-zealand","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-newzealand","27":"tag-nz","28":"tag-property","29":"tag-real","30":"tag-rising","31":"tag-signature","32":"tag-signatures","33":"tag-sparked","34":"tag-star","35":"tag-thompson","36":"tag-tidy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321246","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=321246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}