News

A "lippy'' administration manager who was unjustifiably dismissed by her boss has been awarded $22,000 in lost wages and compensation. She left the company after a number of "abusive'' confrontations with owner Peter Stobbart, the Employment Relations Authority said. Mr Stobbart...

more...

Reinstating a group dubbed the "Pig Patrol" may be the only way of fixing discrepancies in prosecution rates between Pakeha and Maori and Pacific peoples, a former member says. Tongan community leader Will 'Ilolahia - also a co-founder of 1970s movement the Polynesian Panthers - says...

more...

A man who escaped conviction following the Dominion Finance trial is likely have his name suppressed permanently. The man was found not guilty this morning on three charges of theft by a person in a special relationship by Justice Graham Lang following a five-week trial in the High Court at...

more...

Children involved in family law cases will face extra uncertainty following a High Court ruling on the funding of expert witnesses, the Law Society has warned. The Society reacted with disappointment to the ruling that the Legal Aid Agency, formerly the Legal Services Commission, is not...

more...

A former London tax barrister who designed his own tax avoidance scheme has lost his tribunal appeal against HM Revenue & Customs. He was attempting to avoid paying £190,000 in tax. Rex Bretten QC designed a complex scheme which entailed setting up trusts and investing £500,000 in...

more...

Investors who lost money in the Feltex collapse have until the end of next month to join the litigation against the carpet maker's former directors and sellers of its shares. Around 3000 investors have opted-in to representative action against former Feltex directors and allege the company's...

more...

A controversial law change which would limit protest near deep-sea oil and gas operations has been debated for the first time in a heated Parliamentary session. Opposition MPs speaking at the committee stage of the Crown Minerals Bill focused their criticism on Energy Minister Simon Bridges'...

more...

The Inland Revenue Department has been flooded by a last-minute rush of confessions from people who paid themselves artificially low salaries to avoid the top personal tax rate. Taxpayers were offered a chance to make a voluntary disclosure - granted after the outcome of the Penny and Hooper...

more...

Upset families of the 29 men killed at Pike River "cannot accept" findings of a report that absolves government employees of any blame for the 2010 tragedy. Despite "systemic failures" and "inactions" that contributed to the Pike River Mine disaster, no one at the...

more...

It will not be possible to drive to Devonport if plans to intensify neighbouring Belmont proceed, a public meeting heard last night. About 100 people turned out at the Devonport RSA for a meeting on heritage provisions in a new rulebook for the city, but questions quickly turned to Belmont and...

more...

The Maori Party and the Green Party are asking the Government why prosecution rates of young Maori appeared to be far higher than Pakeha for the same crimes. Justice reform group JustSpeak released data which showed that the likelihood of a prosecution for a Maori person aged 10 to 16 was...

more...

A group of companies led by Microsoft have called on European authorities to launch an antitrust investigation into Google's dominance of internet usage on mobile devices. The complaint comes from the "FairSearch" initiative of 17 companies, including Microsoft, Nokia, and Oracle....

more...

New Zealand has more doctors per head of population than lawyers, according to the New Zealand Law Society. A feature in the latest issue of the Law Society’s magazine LawTalk on legal profession demographics shows that there are 11,541 New Zealand-based lawyers. A further 464 practising...

more...

The pace of consolidation across legal services is reflected in M&A activity involving law firms and legal IT, where the biggest providers are buying up their competitors. The legal IT community got a nasty shock with the recent failure of IT services firm 2e2. Despite the attention this...

more...

Defendants will lose the right to choose their lawyer and instead be allocated a representative, under government plans to introduce price-competitive tendering (PCT) for criminal defence services. Other proposals include: Reducing the amount spent on very high-cost cases by 30%....

more...

In the continuing campaign to cut the UK Ministry of Justice's costs, convicted criminals might be made to pay their own legal defence costs. These would be deducted from their future earnings. Criminal legal aid currently costs the UK government approximately GBP1 billion per year. The...

more...

A public relations executive accused of abusing her husband has reappeared in court, where the the judge has asked if the police were being used as a "tool" in the couple's domestic dispute. Sarah Patricia Olliver, 43, has pleaded not guilty to one charge of abusing her property...

more...

Concerns that move to ban psychoactive substances may affect cultural ceremonies. Culturally important substances such as kava could be captured by a law change which aims to stamp out harmful synthetic drugs, MPs have told Parliament. All eight political parties backed the Psychoactive...

more...

Arthur Allan Thomas has condemned a soon to be released police inquiry into the Crewe murders as a mockery and a "cover up" following the police's defence of the man who led the original investigation. At a rare public appearance this morning Mr Thomas, who was twice convicted and...

more...

Amnesty International is asking New Zealand to call on Japan to abolish capital punishment following the release of the 2012 global death penalty statistics report today. The annual review showed that in 2012, at least 682 people were executed in 21 countries. The top five countries that...

more...

Australia's markets regulator has suspended the financial services license of a Queensland-based fund manager that New Zealanders invested over $100 million dollars with. The embattled LM Investment Management, founded by expat New Zealander Peter Drake, last month called in voluntary...

more...

With the cuts to legal aid that are coming into force around the country, student "pro bono" work is fundamental to the future of justice. At the University of East Anglia's recently launched law clinic, we have stepped in to provide a free service that meets the legal needs of...

more...

Information from the Ministry of Justice Case Management System shows that Waitakere District Court had the longest median waiting time for a criminal summary hearing in 2012. The data, as at 31 December 2012, shows the median for Waitakere was 160 days. This compared to the national median of...

more...

A new law change to restrict demonstrations in the deep seas has been described as taking a sledgehammer to peaceful protest by a coalition of high-profile lawyers, unionists, environmentalists and a former Prime Minister. A joint statement will be released today "in defence of the right...

more...

Former spy agency boss Sir Bruce Ferguson says Prime Minister John Key must be "smoking dope" for linking failings at the bureau to him and other former directors with a military or defence background. The comment is the latest salvo in a tit-for-tat skirmish between the pair which...

more...

A new rulebook that sets out to build high-rise apartments and turn rural land into housing is becoming a tough ask for Auckland Mayor Len Brown and his deputy Penny Hulse. Communities are rebelling against high-rise and in-fill housing, Aucklanders are struggling to follow the complex...

more...

Government auditors have asked an agency which criticised aviation regulators for poor record-keeping to improve its own reporting performance. Auditor-General Lyn Provost says the Transport Accident Investigation Commission, although scoring well on other measures, needs to provide better...

more...

Red tape is about to take the spice out of the ethnic food served up to thousands of Aucklanders each year, say some festival operators. Festivals will have fewer stalls selling Oriental and Pacific dishes, say the operators, because of Auckland Council's proposed food safety bylaw requiring...

more...

A family with three autistic children have been told they need to manage their children's behaviour if they want to get a state house. The Mangere parents, Bernadette and Michael Gapes, accept their children damaged their previous private rental house in Weymouth and disturbed the neighbours...

more...

A judge has slammed New Zealand's binge drinking culture as he sentenced a promising league player to nine years in jail for a "brutal" alcohol-fuelled attack that left a young man unable to remember his family's names. In the High Court at Wellington yesterday, Justice Forrest...

more...

The Earthquake Commission has taken out a court injunction against the insurance advocate it accidentally sent thousands of claimants' records to last month to block him from using the information. A commission (EQC) claims manager caused a massive privacy breach when she last month...

more...

Inland Revenue will investigate New Zealand links to off-shore tax havens after receiving information from the International Consortium of Journalists. Investigative journalist Nick Hager is part of the group, which says it has more than 2.5 million files on suspected tax dodgers, including a...

more...

A private investigator has been cleared of alleged misconduct for secretly filming National Party president Peter Goodfellow and his estranged wife Libby Black in their former matrimonial home. Mr Goodfellow claimed Clinton Bowerman had failed to get permission from "all lawful...

more...

Commerce Minister Craig Foss today announced that international shipping to and from New Zealand will be regulated under the Commerce Act, improving oversight and delivering competitive outcomes for exporting industries. Mr Foss says the changes agreed to by Cabinet will remove the...

more...

The Ministry of Education is the latest Government department to admit to a privacy breach. Acting chief executive Peter Hughes said the breach happened on Friday when a Ministry staff member attached the wrong letter to an email. "It was a simple but very unfortunate case of human...

more...

Consumers can now be confident that claims about health on New Zealand food labels are true and accurate, Food Safety Minister Nikki Kaye said today. “Today I signed the standard that will give legal effect to a new food regulation for making claims about the health properties of food on...

more...

A Kiwi's "off the rails" farewell note after he resigned from a top law firm after just a month has attracted international attention on a top United States legal blog. Chapman Tripp graduate Sam Blackman's "resignation" appeared on Above the Law last week, with the blog...

more...

From 1 April, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) overhauled the statutory framework for legal aid in England and Wales. The areas of law that remain eligible for legal aid are contained in part 1 of schedule 1 to LASPO. The areas of law that are being taken out...

more...

The current state of play post-publication of the Leveson Report can only be described as an unsatisfactory stalemate. When Lord Justice Leveson published his recommendation that newspapers should operate a system of independent self-regulation, he surely cannot have envisaged the political...

more...

Two new online matchmaking services for legal professionals claim to offer tickets to survival. Springboard.net is described as a LinkedIn-style social network for solicitors. Its founders say it allows members to tap into a national network of new business opportunities, control and manage...

more...

The Justice Secretary Chris Grayling has announced that migrants will have to wait one year before qualifying for legal aid for qualifying civil claims, reports The Daily Telegraph. The move comes in a week when the justice secretary is expected to announce the next tranche of cuts to legal...

more...

The Bar Standards Board's Professional Conduct Department (PCD) has today released its third quarter 'trends and performance' report. The report provides a detailed summary of the PCD's activities - including the number of new and on-going complaints, and the proportion of these referred to...

more...

As at 31 March 2013 the Ministry of Building Innovation and Employment, Building and Housing has received 6957 claims lodged for 10,327 properties and completed assessments for 12,856 properties. Read more

more...

A law change to give the Defence Force powers to arrest and detain anti-mining protesters in the deep seas and impose stiff penalties on those protesters will not be subjected to the usual processes of public input or a Bill of Rights Act vet by the Attorney-General. The changes, announced by...

more...

Legal aid for the 120,000 couples who divorce in a typical year all but disappears in England and Wales this week, except in cases where domestic violence can be proved. While many are predicting a big increase in DIY divorces, costing as little as £37, the changes have also prompted the arrival...

more...

A federal judge has reminded us of a fundamental reality: if it's digital, we don't own it. In an unfortunate but unsurprising ruling, District Judge Richard J Sullivan sided with the Copyright Cartel – specifically, Capitol Records in this case – against an innovative startup that...

more...

The Law Commission has released its Report on the Review of the Evidence Act 2006. The Act contains a provision requiring the Law Commission to undertake a five yearly operational review, and to report to the Minister of Justice on whether any provisions should be amended or repealed. The...

more...

The Ministry of Justice has published its response to the Criminal Procedure Act consultation on changes to the criminal fixed fee schedules. These changes will come into force on 1 July. Under what is published here providers will be paid new fees to undertake the additional work required by...

more...

Ministry of Justice statistics show that there was a 5.1% fall in the number of civil cases filed in the High Court in 2012 from the previous year. The ministry has just released national court workload statistics for the 2012 calendar year. Read more

more...

Over two-thirds of applications for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court which were decided during 2012 were declined, according to information from the Ministry of Justice. The ministry has released its annual statistics for New Zealand courts for the year ending 31 December 2012. Read...

more...