2019

Supreme Court confirms that replacement cover rights are not assignable The policy also stated in Condition 2, under the heading "Insurance during sale and purchase", that:

Contractual penalties: Court of Appeal upholds High Court's decision in Honey Bees Honey Bees Preschool leased premises from 127 Hobson Street Limited to run a childcare facility. The lease was for six years, with three rights of renewal.

Diminution Not Required For Voidable Transactions In Robt. Jones Holdings Limited v McCullagh [2019] NZSC 86 the Supreme Court confirmed that the requirements outlined in s 294 Companies Act 1993 (“Act“”) are all that is...

Court costs when using employed lawyers – return to status quo ante In Commissioner of Inland Revenue v New Orleans Hotel (2011) Ltd, Associate Judge Matthews of the High Court held that a party represented by an employed lawyer was not e...

No jurisdiction without service: difficulties obtaining interim injunctions against offshore companies In a short judgment released on 18 February 2019 (Commerce Commission v Viagogo AG ([2019] NZHC 187)), the High Court dismissed an interim injunction against Viagogo AG f...

2018

Supreme Court brings final clarity to prospectus liability Houghton v Sanders ([2018] NZSC 74) was a partially successful appeal, which considered the liability of those associated with the 2004 Feltex Carpets initial public offe...

Contractual penalties again A previous update covered a 2017 Court of Appeal decision on contractual penalties.(1) Although the law applied in that decision was not NZ law, but that of the contract...

No costs entitlement without lawyer's invoice – parties using in-house lawyers lose entitlement to costs Since 1983 it has been the position in New Zealand that a party can recover costs in cases where it has been represented by a lawyer that it employed. A recent decision b...

Context is everything – court adopts purposive approach to runway end safety area criteria Landing at Wellington Airport, at the bottom of the North Island of New Zealand, can be hair-raising. A combination of strong cross winds, a tricky approach through hills...

Major changes to privacy laws: implications for New Zealand businesses The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into full effect on May 25 2018 and will affect New Zealand businesses that do business with EU residents or en...

Duty of care owed by local authority to commissioning owner after stadium collapse The Supreme Court recently reversed a Court of Appeal judgment that a local authority did not owe a duty of care to a commissioning owner in issuing a code compliance cer...

Supreme Court decision seen as warning for litigation funders (Published 6 February 2018) In PricewaterhouseCoopers v Walker,(1) the Supreme Court issued a somewhat controversial decision of significance in the area of litigation funding. The decision contains...