When the Crown finds itself steering through politically radioactive terrain, the playbook remains remarkably consistent: call in the legal adults in the room to sort the wheat from the political and bureaucratic chaff. When doing so, the government is fishing in a relatively shallow pool, but the go to operators remain consistently capable of rising
ANZ’s outgoing CEO Antonia Watson leaves with a major litigation gamble hanging over the bank, specifically an appeal against a High Court ruling that could cost up to NZ$125 million and reshape expectations around consumer credit compliance. Her departure coincides with a moment where ANZ’s problem is no longer simply a technical disclosure breach, but
Antonia Watson Exits As ANZ Doubles Down On NZ$125m CCCFA Appeal Read More »
When ANZ Bank New Zealand filed its appeal of Justice Geoffrey Venning’s 4 May 2026 summary judgment, it opened the next chapter of a legal saga that has tested not just the limits of consumer finance law, but the boundaries of what banks can do when the law doesn’t suit them, including trying to change it.
It is also followed by the most recent move of a senior jurist to the independent bar, another Bench-to-Bar move that is becoming increasingly common.
The story of Simons v ANZ is, at its core, a story about access to justice. It is a class action victory that arguably would never have been possible without the strategic deployment of litigation funding to level the playing field between individual borrowers and one of the country’s largest financial institutions.
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$125m, A Retired Judge, and The Case Australian-Owned Kiwi Banks Tried to Kill Read More »
Three more senior litigators have walked from MC to Richmond Chambers. The pattern is now too consistent to be coincidence – and it sharpens a question the firm still hasn’t answered: is the Crown warrant a launchpad, or a liferaft? John Bowie Meredith Connell, New Zealand’s oldest Crown Solicitor’s office and, by its own count,
Crown Jewel or Holding Pattern? The Meredith Connell Question Won’t Go Away Read More »
Franks File Speaks Frankly of Dimwits and Nonsense John Bowie There is, somewhere in Wellington, a Law Society Standards Committee whose members presumably rise each morning, gaze into the bathroom mirror, and think: yes — today I shall save the Nation from the menace of correspondence. It is the only plausible explanation for what was
John Bowie, LawFuel publisher It takes a certain perverted genius for the state broadcaster to threaten to sue a commercial rival over what it primly calls an “employment matter”. But here we are with the Maiki Sherman affair, something Maiki herself might term ‘Faggotgate’ should she be on the right side of the debacle. It’s
Doing the Mahi on Maiki: How TVNZ Tried to Bury Its Own Scandal Read More »
John Bowie, LawFuel Publisher There is a Hall of Shame forming in American courtrooms, a growing roll-call of prestigious law firms undone by chatbots who display Trumpian confidence and a loose relationship with reality. For three years, the admission criteria have been simple: file a brief citing cases that never existed, apologise to a federal
Sullivan & Cromwell Joins the AI Hall of Shame — and the Irony Is Exquisite Read More »
Lady Deborah Chambers KC does not shy away from a fight, which is, one supposes, rather the point of her opinion piece. Writing in the New Zealand Herald this week, the Auckland barrister and silk delivers a crisp, combative argument: the KC rank exists to signal courtroom excellence, full stop. The 2019 addition of a
KC Under Fire: When Silk Meets Substance — And Politics Read More »
By John Bowie | LawFuel publisher The summary judgment hearing may be over, but as Justice Venning considers the verdict, ANZ’s problem remains entirely the same — and the bank’s three lines of defence have a familiar quality: plausible at the bar, less convincing in the cold light of the statute. Few things are quite
ANZ’s CCCFA Defence: The Dog Ate My Compliance Calculator Read More »
Australian mining billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest has poured more than $60 million, – and counting – of his own money into a high-octane federal lawsuit in California’s Northern District Court, accusing Meta of actively enabling and profiting from more than 230,000 deepfake scam ads that stole his likeness to fleece thousands of victims, many of them elderly Australians.
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