Leaky or incompetent? The James Hardie case The massive James Hardie court case on now is the latest in decades of leaky building issues Was the product defective or were the builders incompetent? Thats the nub of the High Court case in progress in Auckland at the moment over James Hardies monolithic cladding systems. It is massive in money terms - $250 million worth - but still a drop in the bucket when it comes to the decades-old leaky building saga. Today on The Detail , Emile Donovan talks to BusinessDesk reporter Victoria Young, who has been following this story for years. The case involves more than a thousand plaintiffs, an Irish multi-national worth billions, is being bankrolled by a British litigation funder, and is scheduled to last four months. Other, similar cases are watching closely to see what comes out of it. Its also the latest development in a problem that stems from changes in the late 1980s, when there was a lot of deregulation in the housing market. A lot of untested building products came onto the market, and this, coupled with the taking away of training for builders and plasterers and that sort of thing at the same time a lot of untreated timber was used in the market . and there was this big trend towards monolithic cladding all of these things at the same time happened, says Young. It obviously took a while to realise it didnt work.