NEW ZEALAND Trends and Developments Contributed by: Shane Campbell and Thomas Westaway, Campbell Westaway
Introduction New Zealand’s litigation funding market has matured faster than the law governing it. Funding is one aspect of New Zealand’s broader and increasingly active civil litigation landscape, relatively overlooked but brought sharply into focus by recent judicial and procedural developments. Over the past decade it has grown from a lightly scrutinised practice into a recognised feature of civil litigation, attracting both domestic participants and some of the world’s leading funding houses. That trajectory reflects a broader global shift: third-party funding is now a standard instrument of dispute strategy. The conditions driving demand are distinctive. New Zealand is geographically remote, with a small legal market, high litigation costs relative to the size of the economy, no statutory class actions regime, and no contingency fee arrangements of the kind available in comparable common law systems. Third-party funding has filled that gap, becoming an important mechanism through which plaintiffs with diffuse or individually modest losses pursue claims against well- resourced institutional defendants. The past two years mark the most significant period of judicial development the funding market has seen, with a sequence of rulings across multiple proceed- ings testing the boundaries of the court-made frame- work at every level. The Court of Appeal’s confirma- tion of common fund order jurisdiction in Simons v ANZ Bank New Zealand Ltd [2024] 3 NZLR 485 (CA) resolved a central commercial uncertainty; the High Court’s March 2026 judgment in Gielen v Johnson & Johnson ( New Zealand ) Ltd [2026] NZHC 758 applied that framework to what may become the largest rep- resentative action in New Zealand’s legal history; and the High Court’s 2025 judgment in Smith v Fonterra Co - operative Group Ltd [2025] 3 NZLR 22 (HC) illus- trated the limits of what courts can achieve without statutory tools when access to justice is directly at stake. These developments coincide with the entry into force on 1 January 2026 of the High Court (Improved Access to Civil Justice) Amendment Rules 2025 (the New Rules). New Zealand’s civil justice system is now built around access as a founding principle, while the
industry funding that access in practice operates out- side any framework designed to secure it. The Market Participants Domestic funders, including LPF Group, Tempest Litigation Funders, Litigation Partners and Litigation Lending Services, now operate alongside interna- tionally active houses, including Omni Bridgeway, Harbour Litigation Funding and Woodsford. Their sustained engagement reflects the market’s assess- ment of the jurisdiction as commercially viable, its courts dependable and returns achievable. Industry estimates place the addressable market at approxi- mately NZD220 million. That figure represents around two-thirds of the civil litigation legal services market, suggesting the practice remains significantly under- utilised relative to its potential. Funded proceedings have ranged from earthquake insurance disputes and banking fee claims to securities litigation, pharmaceu- tical consumer claims, and climate tort proceedings. Access to Justice The growth of third-party litigation funding in New Zealand reflects a structural feature of the civil justice system. Procedural entitlements create real access to justice only where litigants have the economic capac- ity to exercise them. For plaintiffs with diffuse or indi- vidually modest losses, that capacity has increasingly depended on third-party funding: the funder provides capital, absorbs adverse costs risk, and receives a share of any recovery. The New Rules have placed this structural dependence in sharper relief. In codifying access and proportionality as the overriding objec- tives of civil procedure, they formalise what courts have been navigating in practice, without providing the tools to address the conditions that make funded litigation necessary. The case record illustrates the practical significance. Canterbury earthquake policyholders, retail banking customers challenging fee structures, and climate tort claimants have each reached court through funded representative proceedings. In most of those cases, funder involvement was constitutive of the proceeding itself. The Law Commission’s 2022 report recognised the access to justice rationale explicitly. By that point, funded proceedings had generated approximately NZD183 million in damages and settlements over the
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