Free membership of Millbrook Country Club near Arrowtown with access to its golf course plus a $5000 monthly membership credit were the opening gambit by neighbours Nathan Branch and Brian Cartmell challenging Millbrook’s plans to build an on-course halfway house refreshment facility one hundred metres from their property. Millbrook called their bluff, seeing off their High Court challenge to construction plans.
Through their company X-Ray Trust Ltd, neighbours Nathan Branch and Brian Cartmell already had some leverage over Millbrook. In 2014, Millbrook purchased the adjoining Dalgleish Farm as part of its golf course expansion. Golf course construction required rezoning Dalgleish Farm; rural general to Millbrook resort zone. X-Ray challenged the rezoning, claiming it would destroy the rural character and privacy of its property. A deal was thrashed out. X-Ray withdrew its objection. In turn, Millbrook registered covenants over the Dalgleish land, holding it to specified building restrictions and landscaping requirements.
Subsequent negotiations saw a further agreement in June 2018. X-Ray agreed to Millbrook’s construction on the golf course of a halfway house; a small toilet block and service building limited to forty square metres. In return, Cartmell and Branch were given the right to play golf at Millbrook free of charge. X-Ray later argued Millbrook’s plans to construct a café with outdoor seating alongside a toilet was outside the 2018 agreement. Legal action was threatened. X-Ray offered to back off if free membership and a $5000 monthly credit was extended to anyone owning the property currently owned by X-Ray. This would extend the playing concession previously granted to Cartmell and Branch personally and would markedly increase the resale value of X-Ray’s land.
In the High Court, Justice Nation refused X-Ray’s application for an injunction seeking to stop Millbrook’s construction of the half-way house. Only the ridgeline of the proposed halfway house would be visible from X-Ray’s land. Landscaping already in place provided extensive privacy. X-Ray Trust was seeking to gain a commercial advantage from the agreements it had originally negotiated, using them as leverage for monetary gain, Justice Nation said.
X-Ray Trust Ltd v. Millbrook Country Club Ltd – High Court (13.07.21)
21.120