Redefining Responsibility in New Zealand Building Law

New Zealand’s adoption of proportionate liability marks a foundational re-engineering of liability allocation in the building sector. For the first time, defendants will be liable only for the loss they actually caused - replacing the long-entrenched joint and several model.

Join Adjunct Professor Kim Lovegrove, barrister at 48 Chambers (Auckland) and principal consultant to MBIE, for an analysis of New Zealand’s historic shift from joint and several (JSL) to proportionate liability (PL). As one of the key architects in designing and implementing this essential law reform with the Australian Governments, Professor Lovegrove will draw on comparative jurisprudence and his global reform work with the World Bank and Japanese Government to explain how this responsibility-based model will reshape litigation strategy, causation analysis, and risk allocation across New Zealand’s construction law landscape.

Topics include:

• The policy trajectory culminating in the Cabinet’s 2025 decision
• The philosophical divide between JSL’s collectivised exposure and PL’s responsibility-based attribution
• Procedural and evidential implications for litigators and experts
• Interaction with contribution, settlement, and professional indemnity insurance regimes
• Comparative case law likely to inform New Zealand jurisprudence.

Learning objectives

By attending this webinar you will:

• Be provided with insights into how PL operates in practice and what interpretive pathways may emerge in New Zealand.
• Better understand how this reform redefines responsibility, contribution, and evidentiary burden in multi-party disputes.
• Learn how these changes will reshape New Zealand’s construction law landscape.

Who should attend

All practitioners and litigators in the administrative/public, civil litigation, in-house, company/commercial, property and insurance practice areas.

Presenter

Adjunct Professor Kim Lovegrove MSE RML DLitt (honoris causa) FRSN Barrister
48 Chambers (Auckland); Lovegrove & Cotton Construction & Planning Lawyers (Melbourne); Chair, International Building Quality Centre (IBQC)

Professor Lovegrove is a senior construction law barrister and reform expert, practising across both New Zealand and Australia. A former president of the Northern Chapter of the New Zealand Institute of Building, he has over four decades of experience in complex building-law litigation and legislative reform.

Professor Lovegrove has been retained by the World Bank as a senior law reform consultant and subject-matter expert in China, Malaysia, Malawi and India, and by the Government of Japan to advise on reforms to building standards law. As project director of the National Model Building Act, he pioneered the first statutory articulation of proportionate liability in the Southern Hemisphere.

Regarded internationally as a pre-eminent authority on building-regulatory ecology and liability design, Professor Lovegrove holds four concurrent adjunct professorships and a Doctorate of Letters (honoris causa) recognising his contribution to construction law and reform.

Resources

A PDF book is included in the webinar fee and will be emailed to you along with your ticket, one week before the webinar.

Held online, you will be emailed a link to join the webinar one week before. For information on what is required to participate in the webinar, click here. PowerPoint slides will be emailed out after 3pm the day before the webinar.

Fee (Incl GST)

Law Society Members benefit from up to 30% off – please login to receive member pricing

• $160 – Law Society members & associate members
• $230 – Non-members

View group pricing options

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CPD

• If you attended the live webinar, you will receive an electronic certificate of attendance as verification for your CPD records.
• You can view and hear the presentation again, as many times as you wish in your own time for no additional cost.

• Under the CPD Scheme only those who attend a live webinar are eligible to claim CPD hours.
• If you registered but were unable to attend on the day, you can view and hear the archived recording of the presentation.

Cancellation and Refund Policy

You may cancel your registration eight working days in advance of an event, and you will receive a refund less a 25% administration fee. If you cancel less than eight working days in advance of the event, no refund is payable. If you are unable to attend, you may transfer your registration to another person. If you wish to do so you must advise CLE New Zealand Law Society in writing of the change. CLE reserves the right to close registrations, and cancel or reschedule an event as necessary. Where an event is cancelled by CLE, a full refund is payable. View full Law Society event terms.