Sarah is an experienced civil litigator with a broad public and commercial law practice. Before joining LCC, she spent eight years in Crown Law’s Crown Legal Risk Group and four years at a large commercial law firm. She has extensive experience advising and representing Inland Revenue on tax assessments, judicial review and debt recovery, and has also advised on regulatory investigations and defended decisions made by the Ministry of Social Development, Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and the Comptroller of Customs. She has also advised and represented public and private sector clients on compliance, investigations, contractual disputes, tort and Bill of Rights Act claims, land law, privacy and professional negligence. She is an expert in financial, banking and insolvency matters and debt recovery, and has acted for banks, liquidators, government departments, listed companies and other public and private clients on insolvency and complex debt recovery issues. She is ranked by Doyle’s Guide as a rising star in the restructuring and insolvency field.
Sarah conducts trials and defended hearings as lead counsel, and also works closely with senior lawyers and King’s Counsel, and with private clients and in-house legal teams. She has undertaken secondments at Inland Revenue and ANZ Bank.
Recent and notable cases
Representing Xero in a claim for breach of privacy, in relation to a statutory notice to produce information served on Xero: Buxton v Xero Ltd [2021] NZHC 206 and [2022] NZCA 100
Representing ANZ Bank on a claim for breach of contract and the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act and in obtaining indemnity costs against the plaintiffs: Criffel Deer Ltd v ANZ Bank New Zealand Ltd [2022] NZHC 1851 and [2022] NZHC 2418
Representing Stefan Lepionka’s interests in obtaining a civil restraint/vexatious litigant order and dismissing a private prosecution: Paterson v Lepionka & Company Investments Ltd [2020] NZHC 2184 and [2021] NZCA 384 and New Zealand Commercial Law Corp Ltd v Lepionka & Company Investments Ltd [2022] DCR 194
Representing the Crown in a Waitangi Tribunal claim for resumption of forestry assets and compensation under the Crown Forest Assets Act: Waitangi Tribunal Determinations of the Tribunal Preliminary to Interim Recommendations Under Section 8B and 8HC of the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 (Wai 863, 2020)
Led the Crown Law/Inland Revenue team on the Trinity tax avoidance scheme from 2015 to 2018: see for example Bradbury v CIR [2015] 1 NZLR 739 (SC), Muir v CIR [2018] NZCA 129 and Muir v CIR [2018] NZCA 456
Representing the Attorney-General and Inland Revenue as intervener as to the GST implications of a contractual dispute: Y&P NZ Ltd v Wang [2017] NZCA 280
Defending the Secretary for Education’s decision to cancel the licence of an early childhood education provider: Lighthouse ECE Ltd v Secretary for Education [2018]
Representing Oranga Tamariki in applications for disclosure of CYF files under the Criminal Disclosure Act: H v R [2017] NZCA 494
Representing a listed company in a major international arbitration
Advising the Official Assignee in recovering proceeds of a $5m benefit fraud from Austria