News and views

The proposed purchaser of a Dunedin property is at least $150,000 out of pocket after improperly cancelling his agreement. The outcome in the recent court case Strack v Grey1 warns buyers to take a diligent approach to conditions in an agreement for sale and purchase of property.

If you frequently buy and sell property, you may want to keep a close eye on Inland Revenue’s review of some property tax rules that was announced in September 2019. One area being targeted is the use of the ‘main home exemption’.

The High Court has declared a contract term ‘unfair’ for the first time since the 2015 amendments to the Fair Trading Act 1986 (FTA) that make unfair contract terms unenforceable.

The High Court recently imposed a $36,000 fine against the New Zealand Trustees Association for sending 24,000 unsolicited commercial electronic messages.

An ongoing dispute for the MANUKA HONEY trade mark demonstrates the importance of identifying your intellectual property (IP) and protecting that IP in the markets in which you trade.

Immigration New Zealand has introduced changes that affect some employers and migrant workers. These will be introduced in various stages over the next 18 months to 2021.

With the summer season now in full swing, we remind you of a number of changes in the Animal Welfare (Care and Procedures) Regulations 2018. These were mostly minor changes to existing regulations, although some entirely new regulations have also been introduced.

As the year draws to a close, getting your head around yet more changes to the law doesn’t seem like a really festive thing to do. Unfortunately, the government has decided to signal that more changes are on the way to the Residential Tenancies Act in the New Year. The changes notified will affect landlords and tenants across the country.