Commercial disputes with a commercial endpoint.

New Zealand's contract law now lives largely in one statute — the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017, which gathered the older contract legislation into a single place, covering cancellation, damages and relief for misrepresentation. What has not changed is how disputes are actually decided: objectively, on what the words of the contract would convey to a reasonable person with the background the parties shared.

That is why the documents usually decide it. What was recorded, what was performed, what the emails and invoices show — the paper trail carries more weight than either party's memory of what was meant. Early on we audit the documents cold, because the file's real strength is set there, not in the pleadings.

The remedies run from damages through cancellation to specific performance, and the right target depends on what the client actually needs — money, release from the deal, or the deal performed. Fixing that goal early keeps the strategy, and the spend, pointed at something worth winning.

Unpaid debts are the most common commercial dispute there is, and the forum tracks the amount: the Disputes Tribunal to $60,000, the District Court to $350,000, and the High Court above that. A creditor slightly over a threshold can abandon the excess to use the cheaper, faster tier — often a trade worth making.

Where the debtor has no genuine defence, summary judgment is the sharpest tool available: the court decides the claim without a full trial, compressing what could be a year of litigation into a few months. It is not available for genuinely disputed claims — but a surprising share of defended debt claims are defended for delay, not substance.

Costs pressure does the rest. In the courts the loser generally contributes to the winner's costs, and a well-judged Calderbank offer puts the refusing party on risk for costs if the offer is bettered later. Recovery strategy is also solvency strategy: a judgment against a party who cannot pay is a costs bill, not a recovery, so we assess recoverability before anything is filed.

When business relationships break down, the dispute is rarely just legal — livelihoods, family relationships and the company itself are usually tangled in it. The legal shape varies: shareholders locked in deadlock, minorities cut off from information or dividends, partners at odds over exits and value, directors split on the company's direction.

The starting point is always the constitutional documents — the shareholders' agreement, the constitution, the partnership deed — because they usually contain the exit and valuation machinery the parties forgot they agreed to. Where the documents are silent or the conduct has gone beyond them, the courts can intervene, but a negotiated exit at a defensible valuation is almost always the better commercial landing.

These disputes reward early, discreet advice. Positions harden quickly once lawyers' letters start flying inside a small company, and the businesses that survive a shareholder fallout are usually the ones where someone put a realistic deal framework on the table early.