Civil Search Tips

On these pages there is a link to a list of civil judgments available on this website, and information and to help you search and find judgments and information relevant to what you may be looking for. It contains some common keywords that you can use to help with your search and practical hints for quickly finding what you are looking for.

Browsing

The following link will open a list of all of the civil related judgments available on this database. The list has the most recently published judments at the top.

•   Civil judgment list.

Judgments on civil matters that are heard in the District Court are each given a Medium Neutral Citation (MNC) — this includes the year that the matter was heard, a court identifier, a unique number and the names of the parties to the case. For example civil judgments appear in the following format on this database:  Davis v Bradley [2016] NZDC 1589.

Key words

• Civil Keyword List.

The civil keyword list contains keywords — words, phrases and legislation commonly referred to in civil judgments on this site.  To find a civil judgment:

1. Find a word, phrase or legislation title and/or section number relating to the matter you want to search on from the keyword list.
2. Enter the keyword into the search box.
3. Select Civil from the Filter Search dropdown.
4. Press enter.

To limit the number of search results returned you can also filter by the year and full date that the judgment was published on this site.

Searching by MNC number

To search by MNC number:

1. Select Civil from the Filter Search dropdown.
2. Enter the MNC number into the search box.
   
3. Press enter.

Examples:

To search for [2016] NZDC 1589 enter 2016 NZDC 1589. Note that to search by MNC number do not include the square brackets:

Entering 2016 NZDC will return all published Civil judgments delivered or heard in 2016.

Entering NZDC 1589 will return all judgments containing both NZDC and the number "1589", ie [2016] NZDC 1589, [2016] NZDC 15891, [2017] NZDC 1589, [2017] NZDC 15896 etc.

To find only judgments containing the number "1589" only

Anonymisation

• Note that in some circumstances party names in some judgments have been changed to comply with legal requirements.

Content or names within judgments in this database may be suppressed because of a statutory provision, a suppression order of the court, or an order made in the course of delivering judgment.

Some published judgments may contain banners noting that a statutory suppression order applies or a court order may be noted in the judgment, these decisions are only published after the names have been changed and and any identifying details of the protected person have been redacted.

Civil judgments in this database may have been anonymised — real names are replaced with pseudonyms and, where it is appropriate by editing and removing information that would allow any protected parties to be identified. Sensitive commercial information may have also been redacted.

Identifying information or information within a judgment that has been removed is identified by [ ] for example, [address deleted].

For more information on statutory prohibitions see:

• Statutory Prohibitions on Publication.