A TOP judge bemoaned the £150,000 legal bill racked up in a bitter dispute between a building company and a Northwich nursery over a 10m-wide extension.

Lord Justice Dyson said the costs were “out of proportion” to the dispute over the extension to the Chrysalis Day Nursery, which is on the Gadbrook Business Park.

Hull-based builders, Marchant Walker Ltd, went to London’s Civil Appeal Court on Monday in a bid to overturn a Chester County Court ruling in May that they must demolish and rebuild the 21m X 10m extension built in 2004.

The company was taken on to do the work in December 2003 and the building’s leaseholders, Michael Bowe and Kathryn Beaumont Bowe, agreed to pay £161,806 for the works including a corridor linking a new building with the old one.

The building work took place in early 2004 – but Mr and Mrs Bowe complained about the state of some of the brickwork and Marchant Walker agreed they should pay around £28,000 less for the work, once the faults had been remedied.

But the dispute began to spiral out of control when the Bowes and the builders – who had sub-contracted out the brickwork – failed to agree exactly where the faults lay and they ended up in court.

Judge Halbert, sitting at the County Court, ruled in May that the ‘cumulative effect’ of the flaws in the work meant all the extension’s brickwork should be demolished and rebuilt.

Neil Cameron, for Marchant Walker, told Appeal Court judge, Lord Justice Dyson, that there was nothing ‘structurally wrong’ with the building and that any rebuild would be purely for ‘aesthetic’ reasons.

‘There were many failures by the judge to consider the evidence properly and the substitution of his own views was wrong’, the barrister added.

But, refusing to grant the company permission to appeal, Lord Justice Dyson said Judge Halbert was ‘entitled to take the view he did’.

The appeal judge added: ‘This is a most unfortunate piece of litigation where the costs are out of all proportion to the case.

‘The case was conducted over a period of eight days – a trial length of that duration is simply not justified by the sums of money realistically at stake.

‘It is plainly regrettable that the costs are now the driving force for this appeal’.

Marchant Walker Ltd now faces having to pay the Bowes’ legal bills which Mr Cameron said stood at about £150,000.