Health & Medical Law

Our Health and Medical Law team is led by Anna Adams.

We combine an intuitive understanding of the accountability expected of public health bodies with the unrivalled courtroom and tribunal expertise of New Zealand’s largest litigation firm.

We have decades of experience in the often-novel civil proceedings arising out of clinical and commercial aspects of the health sector, including negligence claims and treatment-related litigation, recovery of health funding and judicial review of public health agency decisions.

We prosecute regulatory offences involving health-related offending, including fraud, medicines and public health issues.

We also have extensive experience acting for and against health professionals in disciplinary inquiries and proceedings before administrative tribunals, including the Human Rights Review Tribunal.

We have represented health bodies in proceedings involving vulnerable people under a range of statutes, including the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act, the Care of Children Act, and the Habeas Corpus Act.

Meredith Connell has been engaged as counsel in many complex and high-profile inquests with health-related issues or medical evidence, such as the inquest into the death of the Kahui twins in Auckland.

Our advice covers the full range of difficult and sensitive medico-legal issues including maternity care, suicide, mental health, eligibility for public-health funding, doctor-patient confidentiality and privilege, infectious diseases, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, refusing and compelling treatment, and access to patients.