A corporate executive turned local politician and his wife have been partly successful in their Supreme Court of Queensland action against Westpac after implementing a self-managed superannuation fund strategy in 2007 that failed.Sunshine Coast mayor Mark Jamieson, who was chief executive officer of APN News and Media at the time, and his wife Lorrell alleged they were given negligent advice by Westpac's financial planners in April and May 2007. Justice David Jackson agreed on several major points with the Jamiesons.Notably, Westpac's advisers were held to have been negligent in failing to advise their clients that while approximately A$600,000 in interest on a $5 million non-recourse loan from Macquarie Bank needed to be paid in equal instalments over the 3-year term of the loan, this represented only about half the potential interest exposure. The borrowed funds had been applied to buying units in the MQ Gateway Trust, a Macquarie vehicle for investing in local and international equities.When the underlying investments failed to generate capital growth, Mr Jamieson was required to repay a further $660,000 interest on the $5 million loan itself, plus interest on the amount of interest that had been capitalised. The amount payable, well in excess of $1.2 million, far exceeded the total amount of around $650,000 that the Jamiesons had agreed to put at risk under the arrangement.However, Justice Jackman reduced the amount of damages that might have otherwise applied, which by the time of the hearing were around $1.3 million, given Mr Jamieson's track record of making large tax-driven investments each year to shield his taxable income, his position as chief executive of a listed company, and his apparent share market experience.Justice Jackman ordered the payments and losses from the MQ Gateway Trust investment be recalculated to allow for the after tax effect of making a notional agribusiness investment of $200,000 in the year ended 30 June 2007, which he presumed would have been made by Mr Jamieson if he had not accepted the advice from the Westpac advisers. The Jamiesons also alleged that they were encouraged to borrow in their own right and make super fund contributions, without being warned that ongoing interest payments would diminish the value of such a strategy.Justice Jackson found on the basis of the "balance of probabilities" that the Jamiesons would not have borrowed the $700,000 to make un-deducted contributions to their SMSF if they had not been advised to do so by the Westpac advisers. Nonetheless, he limited their loss to two years of interest payments, rather than the four years paid, by which time the Jamiesons should have realised that the loan needed to be repaid for the strategy to be effective.Justice Jackson didn't agree, however, that the couple's SMSF trustee should be compensated for investing in instalment warrants, which were effectively geared equity investments. He noted that Jamieson was a very experienced investor and the CEO of a large listed company and therefore should have been well aware of the risks.The parties were directed to submit calculations of damages