His solicitor, former Saunders partner Cran Bull, told him the firm would not pay the employees until he obtained a medical certificate confirming he had capacity to make the gifts.<\/p>\n
In January 2019, Mauger\u2019s doctor, Harsed Chima, certified that he was \u201ccurrently of sound mind\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mauger, who had dementia, later went to court through his daughter Penelope Cron to recover the money. <\/p>\n
He died in November 2020, and Cron and her brothers Phil, Timothy and Stephen continued the action against the employees. <\/p>\n
That case settled in 2024.<\/p>\n
The siblings then sued Saunders, alleging its advice about the gifts was deficient.<\/p>\n
Saunders has brought a separate claim against Chima, who denies the allegations against him.<\/p>\n
Chima argues one of the firm\u2019s claims against him was filed outside the ordinary six-year time limit.<\/p>\n
Saunders says it did not know it might suffer a loss until the siblings formally notified it of potential claims in October 2023.<\/p>\n
To test that account, Chima sought earlier documents, including communications with Saunders\u2019 insurer. <\/p>\n
The firm argued documents predating the October 2023 letter were irrelevant and had listed groups of documents as privileged.<\/p>\n
Associate Judge Bill Gambrill found earlier documents could be relevant to what Saunders knew and when.<\/p>\n
The firm was ordered to individually list the challenged documents and specify the basis and start date of any privilege claim.<\/p>\n
In a separate application, Saunders sought answers from Chima about his usual practice when assessing patients\u2019 capacity and what he said to Mauger\u2019s solicitor. <\/p>\n
Judge Gambrill declined to require answers to the disputed questions, saying they could be put to him in cross-examination.<\/p>\n
The ruling deals with preparations for the trial and does not decide whether the firm or the doctor was negligent.<\/p>\n
The case is set down for trial on February 22 next year. <\/p>\n
Ben Tomsett is a journalist based in Dunedin. He joined the Herald in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His solicitor, former Saunders partner Cran Bull, told him the firm would not pay the employees until he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7495,4492,9218,138,4487,4484,2109,2209,9064,1138,6637,78933,4507,8307,302899,302898,10934,1132,130,111,139,69,1523,21037,24831,133651,131,1361,165],"class_list":["post-614792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-1m","tag-advised","tag-before","tag-business","tag-christchurch","tag-employees","tag-family","tag-father","tag-fathers","tag-firm","tag-gave","tag-gifts","tag-late","tag-law","tag-mauger","tag-maugers","tag-mayor","tag-million","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-phil","tag-siblings","tag-suing","tag-than","tag-that","tag-their"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614792","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=614792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}