Landlords' more than $8000 claim against prisoner who failed to get electronically monitored bail slashed
Saturday, 18 July 2026
The Tenancy Tribunal has ruled a prisoner is not on the hook for rent arrears while in custody.
The landlords, Lyndon Charles Franks and Cathryn Mary Williams, originally claimed arrears of $8650 up until December 2025, including storage costs for his belongings.
However, the tribunal ruled Selwyn Eric Cormack’s tenancy should have ended soon after the denial of his application for electronically monitored bail (EM bail) while he was in prison, when it became clear he would remain in custody.
Cormack began his tenancy in Mataura in July 2023, paying $350 a week in rent.
He had not paid a bond and did not sign a tenancy agreement until after his arrest in June 2024 which saw him placed in custody.
The application for EM bail was denied the next month.
The landlords claimed that Cormack believed he would get bail and wanted to keep renting the house for when he did.
They said they signed to be the agent for Cormack to arrange for six months of rent to be paid by Work and Income while he was in custody.
They said they were advised in June 2025, a year after his arrest, that WINZ would not pay the rent, and emailed Cormack to let him know he would need to sort the payments.
Cormack believed that when EM bail was declined at the end of July 2024, the tenancy should have come to an end on August 1, 2024, and that he was told the rent would be paid for up to six months.
The tribunal found that the tenancy should have been terminated on 21 days’ notice after August 1.
Cormack was ordered to pay rent arrears of $1650 to cover the time from his arrest to August 24.
The landlords also made a claim for storage cost of about $3000 after they chose to move his belongings into storage without informing Cormack of the intention to do so.
The tribunal found Cormack needed to contribute $460 to the costs after Cormack said had he known the tenancy was ending, he would have arranged for someone to do this.
He said he found out the landlords had chosen to end the tenancy when he phoned in December 2024 and was told they were cleaning the property and putting his things into storage.
A report from the tribunal noted that an invoice for the storage was rendered from the landlords' own business and that an application for the disposal of the belongings was not made until November 2025.
Under the Residential Tenancies Act, a landlord can only dispose of or put a tenant’s belongings into storage if they have been unable to contact them, or if the tenant has been unable to collect the goods within an agreed-upon period.
The landlords also claimed for repairs made to the tenant’s truck, which they sold on his behalf, but given there was no information about how much value the work would have added to the truck, the tribunal did not accept it should be reimbursed.
The adjudicator noted that neither parties took steps to mitigate their losses in this case.