New Zealand still has no class actions statute as of 2026-09-09 — on 2022-11-30 the government recorded the absence and accepted in principle the recommendation to enact one

What is happening?

New Zealand has no statute governing class actions. The formal response of the government to the Law Commission, dated 2022-11-30, records that the country does not currently have a class actions regime.

What stands in place of a statute is one procedural rule. Rule 4.24 of the High Court Rules 2016 allows a proceeding to be brought by a person on behalf of, or for the benefit of, all persons with the same interest in the subject matter of that proceeding. The rule addresses nothing further. Certification standards, opt-in and opt-out mechanics, notice to class members, supervision of litigation funders, settlement approval and the distribution of a recovery are all absent from its text.

The Law Commission examined that gap from 2019 and delivered its final report to Parliament on 2022-06-27 with 121 recommendations. The central three were a standalone Class Actions Act, abolition of the torts of maintenance and champerty so that litigation funding rests on a clear legal footing, and a statutory procedure for court approval of litigation funding agreements.

The government replied on 2022-11-30. It accepted the recommendations in principle and stated an intention to undertake policy work to advance them beginning in 2023. As of 2026-09-09 no statute has been enacted. A practice guide covering 2025 records no notable government initiatives since the 2022 report and describes the policy landscape as largely unchanged. A second guide covering 2026 records that no implementing legislation has been enacted.

In the meantime the courts have supplied the missing procedure one order at a time. In 2022 the High Court approved an opt-out representative action against two registered banks concerning disclosure when loan terms were varied, and made a common fund order, which is an order spreading the share of a litigation funder across every member of the represented class. The judgment accepted that the text of rule 4.24 does not itself extend to making such an order, and located the power instead in the inherent jurisdiction of the court together with the general rules on the conduct of proceedings. On 2024-07-19 the Court of Appeal upheld that approach and held that such an order may be made as early in the proceeding as possible. On 2024-12-20 the Supreme Court declined leave to appeal, recording that it was not satisfied the challenge to the jurisdictional findings below had sufficient prospects of success to justify a further appeal.

Those proceedings cover roughly 73,000 customers of one bank and roughly 17,000 of the other, on the figures recorded in that judgment. One of the two was resolved by settlement on 2025-10-07 in the sum of NZD 135.6 million. In the other, the High Court entered summary judgment on 2026-05-06 finding a breach of disclosure obligations over the period from 2015-06-06 to 2016-05-28, with reported maximum liability of NZD 125 million. On 2026-03-26 a court granted leave for a further opt-out representative action to proceed, concerning over-the-counter cold and flu medicines sold between 2005 and 2025.

Whose problem is this?

The body that identified the gap and specified how to close it has no power to close it, and the body that has the power has not used it since accepting the recommendations in principle in November 2022.

Where does this problem end?

The boundary matters here because a recommendation and a statute are different things. A reader who thinks the Law Commission reached the right answers and a reader who thinks it did not can both agree on the dates set out below.

What is the state now, and what should it be?

Now

What it should be

The target state is on the record and the government put it there. On 2022-11-30 it accepted the recommendations of the Law Commission in principle, and those recommendations name the destination precisely: a standalone Class Actions Act, abolition of the torts of maintenance and champerty so that litigation funding rests on a clear legal footing, and a statutory procedure for court approval of funding agreements.

The ceiling of that commitment is what the response itself says, and it is worth stating exactly. The response accepts in principle and undertakes to begin policy work in 2023. It does not commit to introducing a bill, it names no date, and no source opened here supplies one from any later document.

How big is it?

The quantities the opened sources carry describe proceedings and their membership rather than a population.

Class membership in the proceedings the appellate courts have addressed. The Supreme Court judgment of 2024-12-20 records the represented classes as roughly 73,000 customers of one bank and roughly 17,000 of the other, figures originating in the 2022 High Court order that approved the representative action. Together that is about 90,000 people whose claims are being managed under a procedure the courts assembled rather than one Parliament wrote.

Volume of representative actions. A practice guide citing a 2020 issues paper of the Law Commission puts cumulative filings under rule 4.24 at 44 as of 2020-12, most of them since 2000. No source opened here updates that count, and none identifies any body that compiles one.

Money moving through the gap. One of the two banking proceedings settled for NZD 135.6 million on 2025-10-07. In the other, reported maximum liability following the summary judgment of 2026-05-06 is NZD 125 million. A practice guide estimates the litigation funding market at about NZD 220 million, described as roughly two thirds of spending on legal services in civil litigation; that guide gives no methodology and names no issuing body.

No affected population is derivable, and the reason is structural. About 90,000 is a floor drawn from two proceedings, not a total for the problem. The number that would answer the question is the membership of every live representative action, and building it needs two terms that no opened source supplies: a current count of live proceedings, and a class size for each of them. The 2020 cumulative figure of 44 filings cannot stand in for the first, because a filing is not a live proceeding. The two known class sizes cannot stand in for the second, because both come from unusually large mass consumer claims and applying them to the rest would measure the wrong thing. The class size of the action allowed to proceed on 2026-03-26 is not quantified in any source opened here.

Under what conditions does it arise?

1. The rule was not written for this. Rule 4.24 authorises a proceeding on behalf of persons with the same interest and stops there. Every other component of a class action procedure is absent from its text, so a court that needs one has to find it somewhere else.

2. Inherent jurisdiction fills the space one order at a time. The courts held that the power to make a common fund order comes not from the text of rule 4.24 but from the inherent jurisdiction of the court together with the general rules on the conduct of proceedings. That yields a workable answer for the case in front of the court and no general rule for the next one until an appellate court supplies it.

3. Nothing in the process carries a clock. A government response that accepts recommendations in principle creates no deadline, no reporting duty and no trigger. The Law Commission discharged its function by reporting, and it has no power to require that a bill follow.

4. The separate reform track does not reach this. Civil procedure changes gazetted on 2025-07-24 and in force from 2026-01-01 were directed at the efficiency of litigation generally. A practice guide describing them records that class actions and the supervision of litigation funding were not part of them.

5. Nothing counts the gap. No statutory register records how many representative actions are live, so the volume the procedure is carrying is not published anywhere. The most recent cumulative figure opened here is from 2020-12 and it counts filings rather than live proceedings.

Each of these conditions is stable on its own, and together they describe a system in which the missing statute imposes no cost on anyone who has the power to write it.

What has been tried?

Two directions have run at once and only one of them has moved. The legislative direction stopped at acceptance in principle and has produced no instrument. The judicial direction has produced a settled appellate position on funding orders, and it can only answer the questions that happen to reach a court.

What was found?

Why is it still unsolved?

Institutional gap — the design work is finished and published, and nothing in the system obliges anyone to enact it.

A law reform body produces a report and a government produces a response, and neither of those steps carries an obligation to produce a statute. The response of 2022-11-30 is the strongest commitment on the record, and its operative words are acceptance in principle and an intention to begin policy work. Acceptance in principle has no date attached to it, no reporting duty behind it and no consequence if nothing follows. Four years later the recorded position is the same one.

The second part of the gap is that the courts are able to keep the system running, which absorbs the pressure that would otherwise build. Faced with a representative action that needed a funding order, the courts did not decline for want of a statute. They located the power in inherent jurisdiction and in the general rules governing the conduct of proceedings, and by 2024-12-20 that approach had survived two appeals. A procedure that visibly fails creates urgency. A procedure that works because judges keep supplying the missing parts produces judgments instead of bills.

The third part is that inaction here is not an event. There is no committee stage to complete, no submission period to close and no vote to lose, because nothing has been introduced. A bill that fails leaves a record behind it. A bill that is never drafted leaves the same public position as a bill that is being drafted, and no source opened here distinguishes the two.

What observation would mean it is solved?

Candidates — (a) a Class Actions Act is enacted and comes into force on a stated date (b) the High Court Rules are amended to carry certification, funder supervision and settlement approval, without a separate Act (c) appellate courts stop having to source class action powers from inherent jurisdiction, because the powers they apply are conferred by an instrument.

(a) alone is weaker than it looks. An Act can be enacted with a commencement date years out, with a certification threshold high enough that few proceedings clear it, or without the funding provisions the Law Commission placed at the centre of the package. Enactment is a date. What it changes depends on what is in it.

(b) would close part of the gap and not the part the response accepted. Rules made by the Rules Committee can supply procedure. They cannot abolish the torts of maintenance and champerty, which is a matter for Parliament, and that abolition is one of the three central recommendations.

(c) has the least room in it and is also the slowest. It can only be read in retrospect, from a run of judgments that did not need to reach for inherent jurisdiction. It also cannot be read from the mere absence of such judgments, because a period with no funding disputes looks the same as a period in which a statute answered them.

The three have to be read together, and none of them is satisfied by an acceptance in principle.

What is it connected to?

Fills with researchaccess to justice and legal aid funding, the regulation of third party litigation funding as a financial activity, statutory regimes that carry their own aggregation mechanisms alongside rule 4.24, and class action reform in comparable jurisdictions. Relation type and evidence grade were not confirmed in this round.

What these sources do not say

• What the policy work has consisted of since 2023. The response of 2022-11-30 states an intention to begin policy work in that year. No source opened here — no ministry progress report, no follow-up from the Law Commission, no ministerial statement — describes what that work has been.
• Whether a bill has ever been introduced. The two practice guides record that no implementing legislation has been enacted and that no notable government initiatives followed the 2022 report. Neither is a register of bills, and no source opened here records either the introduction of a bill or the absence of one. Enactment and introduction are different facts, and only the first of them is covered.
• The position of the administration formed after the 2023 change of government. The published position of the government on these recommendations is the 2022 response. No source opened here carries a later statement of position from any minister.
• Whether the settlement of 2025-10-07 involved any admission of liability. The report of it gives the sum and the date and stops there.
• Whether the summary judgment of 2026-05-06 is under appeal, and what has actually been awarded. The reported figure of NZD 125 million is described as a maximum exposure rather than a determined amount. No source opened here records an appeal, a ruling on quantum, or the absence of either.
• The size of the class in the action allowed to proceed on 2026-03-26. The case update records the grant of leave and the period of sale covered, and gives no class size.
• How many representative actions are live. The most recent cumulative figure in any source opened here is 44 filings as of 2020-12, carried by a practice guide citing a 2020 issues paper. Nothing opened here updates it, and nothing opened here says whether any body compiles such a count.
• How the litigation funding market estimate of about NZD 220 million was produced. The practice guide that carries the figure names no issuing body and describes no methodology.
• The current text of rule 4.24 as published by the legislation service. The government response sets the rule out, and that is the text used here. The official legislation page refuses automated access, so no source opened here carries the published text as it currently stands.

See the evidence

Two primary documents were opened in full and they carry the load of this dossier. The government response of 2022-11-30 supplies the record that no class actions regime exists, the acceptance in principle, the 2023 policy-work intention and the text of rule 4.24. The Supreme Court decision of 2024-12-20 supplies the class sizes, the first-instance holding on the reach of rule 4.24 and the jurisdictional basis for a common fund order, and it reasons throughout from the same statutory absence the 2022 response recorded. The Law Commission news release supplies the report date and the count of recommendations. Everything after 2024 comes from professional guides and news reports rather than from judgments or official records, and that is why the finding that nothing has been enacted since 2022 is graded medium while the finding that no regime exists is graded high. Where sources overlap they agree: two independent practice guides, written a year apart, both record that nothing has been enacted, and neither reports a bill. Two rows carry no URL and both are left in place with the reason stated rather than removed. This is a research-based definition, so observation_refs is empty and provenance_mode: press-derived.

People affected

Estimated range Not derivable

The reason and what is missing are listed under “What is missing” below