Friday, October 10, 2025
New Silks Appointed
Twelve new Silks (King’s Counsel) have been appointed in 2025. They include the first Pacific Island appointee – Tiana Epati, who is Samoan. She has had a stellar career, including as President of the Pacific Island Lawyers’ Association and as President of the New Zealand Law Society. She lives in Gisborne but is also a member of Bankside Chambers in Auckland. Her areas of practice are criminal law, regulatory investigations, companies and securities law and public and administrative law. King’s Counsel are appointed in New Zealand by the Attorney-General in concurrence with the Chief Justice, after a process of consideration More...
Monday, May 19, 2025
Theory of the Case
I was recently invited to address a group of young lawyers by a law firm on the subject of “The Theory of the Case”. I had to confess that writing down a theory of the case has not been a practice that I have followed throughout my litigation career. However, I found that there is a considerable volume of articles written on the subject which explain the advantages of doing so in a formal way. One that I found particularly helpful was by a Canadian lawyer, Martin Sclisizzi entitled “Theory of the Case How and Why Developed – an Overview”. Sclisizzi More...
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
The University of Auckland's Proposal to Merge the Faculties of Law and Business & Economics
On 12 November 2024, the University of Auckland published a proposal to merge the Faculties of Law and of Business and Economics into one Faculty. The proposal includes a division of the Law School into two departments, one focused on private law (including commercial law) and the other on public law.The justification for this radical proposal is stated as follows: “By combining the Faculties of Law and Business & Economics, the aim of the proposal is to create a comprehensive faculty that brings together distinct and complementary disciplinary strength.This proposed combined faculty structure would foster greater collaboration across a wide More...
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Why I Did Not Sign "The Letter"
It has been reported publicly that 42 King’s Counsel have signed a letter addressed to the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General. They urge the Prime Minister to “act responsibly now and abandon” the Treaty Principles Bill which had just had its First Reading. This, notwithstanding that Christopher Luxon had (a) committed to the ACT party that National would support the introduction of the Bill as a condition of ACT agreeing to form a Government with National; but (b) stated publicly that he would not support the Bill at its Second Reading. I was asked to sign the letter but More...
Friday, September 13, 2024
Is there any hope for the next America's Cup being held in Auckland?
I begin this piece with an apology to New Zealand readers. My assumption is that there is still interest in the America’s Cup. All the evidence is however that New Zealanders feel betrayed by the decision of Team New Zealand (aided by the officers of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron) to take the Cup to Barcelona and that they have switched off from a team that calls itself Team New Zealand but no longer credibly represents New Zealand. Significantly, a third of the membership of the Squadron resigned or refused to renew their membership, which has More...
Friday, September 22, 2023
Directors’ Duties to Creditors in an Insolvency Situation
Notes of lecture to Lawyers and Accountants specializing in Trust law (19 September 2023)
Trading while insolvent
Two-fold insolvency test: (1) balance sheet (assets and liabilities) (2) liquidity (paying debts as they fall due
What are directors’ duties
largely statutory – originated in Chancery Courts in England as fiduciary in nature – directors entrusted with company assets. (The leading exposition of directors’ duties was that of Romer J in Re City Equitable Fire Insurance Company Ltd. [1925] 1 Ch. 407: duties are fiduciary in nature but directors are not trustees (at 426).)
Companies Act 1993, (relevantly to present discussion) sections More...
Friday, August 18, 2023
Redundancy, Good faith and Employment Law
These are troubled times. Companies are seeking to cut costs and
restructuring and reduction of their work force is an obvious way of doing so.
Redundancy is the outcome. Unlike many countries, New Zealand lacks any
statute that deals specifically with employers’ obligations and employees’
rights in a redundancy situation. For that reason, a recent Judgment of the
Employment Court delivered by former President of the New Zealand Law
Society, Judge Kathryn Beck – New Zealand Steel Limited v. Haddad [2023]
NZEmpC 57 (5 April 2023) - will be of interest. It goes a long way to filling the
gap More...
Tuesday, May 09, 2023
Is the America's Cup a poisoned chalice for New Zealand?
We all remember the excitement when Sir Peter Blake led Team New Zealand to win the America’s Cup from the United States in 1995, with the whole country getting behind the “red socks” campaign to raise money to ensure that the team got to the finish line. Winning it from “Dirty Dennis” Connor, who was seen to be unsporting and who didn’t play fair, was the icing on the cake. However, after Blake left, the Cup was lost to Alinghi but then won back again by Team NZ under Grant Dalton from Oracle in 2017 and then successfully defended in More...
Wednesday, December 07, 2022
The Passing of Two Knights of the Realm - Sir Murray Halberg and Sir Ian Barker
The past month has seen two outstanding men leave us – both, coincidentally, aged 89. Their accomplishments have been prominently recounted in the media and so this is not the place to write obituaries. But in different ways, they were each influential in my sporting and professional endeavours and I would like to pay a personal tribute to each of them. I did this previously in the case of George Barton QC, Don Dugdale and Richard Craddock QC (14 September 2011) and David Barnes (World Champion and America’s Cup sailor (2 November 2020). I feel privileged to have known and More...
Monday, October 31, 2022
Random Legal Thoughts While on a Post-Covid Lockdown European Trip
If nothing else, the last 3 years of a Covid-infected world have forced us to face new living and working conditions and severely inhibited our ability to travel abroad. Enforced working from home during lockdowns and virtual Court hearings had their novelty value and there are some who would be happy never to go back to an office and (possibly) some Judges or Justice officials who would see the virtual hearing as a welcome step towards dispensing with oral hearings altogether with “Judgment on the papers” as an infinitely more efficient (and less costly) form of decision-making.The retorts are obvious. More...