Hell Pizza hath no fury like a financier scorned

JOHN SELKIRK/Stuff.co.nz

TURN UP THE HEAT: A Hell Pizza mobile billboard depicting Mark Hotchin and their Greed pizza outside Hotchin's multi-million dollar house under construction in Auckland's Paratai Drive.

Troubled finance group Hanover is accusing Hell Pizza of positioning a mobile billboard mocking Mark Hotchin outside his six-year-old daughter's school.

Hanover said the campaign was "highly offensive and deliberately very personal".

Hell put the face of Mr Hotchin, Hanover's co-founder, on a billboard next to the word Greed, the name of one of its pizzas. This week it drove the billboard around Auckland and parked it outside the $30 million home that Mr Hotchin is having built.

Hanover lawyers served Hell Pizza with a cease and desist order yesterday. They accused Hell of parking the billboard outside the school of Mr Hotchin's daughter "just as her and her mother were leaving the building".

Hell spokesman Matt Blomfield said the billboard did not go within four kilometres of the school and it was "distasteful that [Mr Hotchin] is using his daughter to try and get public sympathy".

Public opinion was on Hell's side and he had received emails from Hanover investors thanking him for launching the campaign, as well as support on talkback radio.

"Heaps of people have lost their money and they're all good people. These people went in investing their life savings and now they're suffering while this guy [Mr Hotchin] is living the life of Rockefeller."

Hanover ran into financial difficulties in July last year, and subsequently froze repayments on $554m from 17,000 investors. A deal that could salvage 78 cents in the dollar is being worked on.

Hell lawyer Mike Alexander, of Knight Coldicutt, said the chain denied any unauthorised use, defamation or breach of the Advertising Standards Authority Code in its campaign. But Hell offered to withdraw the campaign if Mr Hotchin and Hanover promised to take no further legal action.

In an email response, Hanover lawyer John McKay, of Chapman Tripp, told Hell that if all components of the ad campaign were withdrawn it would be "unlikely our clients will take the matter any further".

"However, our clients must reserve their rights in circumstances where the extent of the campaign and its consequences may not yet be fully appreciated."

Mr Blomfield said the pizza chain had "parked up" the billboard but was waiting for Hanover to reconsider the legal threat before committing to pulling it completely.