New rules will be implemented next year
The procedures for ordinary civil proceedings in the High Court will be revised significantly in line with the implementation of The High Court (Improved Access to Civil Justice) Amendment Rules 2025 next year.
The new rules incorporate suggestions from the rules committee’s 2022 Improved Access to Civil Justice Report. According to rules committee chair Francis Cooke’s summary of changes on the Courts of New Zealand website, this prevents disproportionate procedural arguments, drives the full understanding of a case from both sides, and identifies key issues early.
One change is the implementation of the “evidence-first” model. Under this model, factual witness statements must be served shortly after the filing of proceedings in line with standard directions except where dispositive interlocutory applications were made.
Known adverse documents must be disclosed under initial disclosure requirements; however, further orders will be made only after the factual evidence is provided unless the court directs otherwise.
Subsequently, a judicial issues conference will be convened to ensure that parties have identified the determinative issues in dispute. The conference will also tackles the requirements needed for a fair determination of the proceeding.
Conferences are set to last half a day, and client representatives are likely to be expected to appear. Parties will discuss the full details of the case with the judge, and any directions for trial will be set out here.
Contemporary documentation at trial will be emphasised, and the evidence of witnesses traversing event narratives gleaned from contemporaneous documents is expected to be reduced. Such documents will be released to the court through chronologies and the agreed bundle; witnesses’ oral evidence will concentrate on relevant factual disputes.
Each party’s openings are expected to contain a narrative of events based on the documents and should be filed in advance at trial.
The rules will take effect for proceedings filed after 1 January 2026. Nonetheless, Cooke confirmed that ongoing proceedings may be brought under the new regime as appropriate.
