Jul 15, 2026
The following will
resonate to the everyday kiwi and is deeply personal for me
with the current lawsuit I have filed against Byron
Clark author,
HarperCollins a multinational publishing
conglomerate, the second largest publisher, and
Spinoff the NZ online magazine and news
website.
One of the greatest barriers to justice is
not always the strength or weakness of a legal claim, but
whether a person can afford to have that claim heard at
all.
Applications for security for costs are intended
to serve a legitimate purpose. They protect defendants from
the risk of incurring substantial legal costs that may never
be recovered if they successfully defend the proceedings.
Law firms also have a legitimate interest in ensuring that
their clients are not exposed to unnecessary financial
risk.
However, where well-funded defendants routinely
seek security for costs against individual plaintiffs of
modest means, the practical effect can be to deny
access to the courts altogether. A plaintiff may
have a genuine and arguable claim, yet be unable to continue
simply because they cannot raise tens or hundreds of
thousands of dollars as security.
This creates an
imbalance in the justice system. Large corporations,
insurers and wealthy litigants are able to use their
financial resources to place additional procedural hurdles
in front of those with fewer means. While security for costs
is not intended to prevent legitimate claims, in
practice it can become a barrier that only the wealthy can
overcome.
Advertisement – scroll to continue reading
Access to justice is a fundamental
principle underpinning the rule of law. Rights are
of little value if they exist only for those who can afford
to enforce them. Courts must therefore carefully
balance the legitimate interests of defendants against the
equally important public interest in ensuring that genuine
claims are determined on their merits.
If procedural
mechanisms such as security for costs are applied without
sufficient regard to a plaintiff’s ability to pay, they
risk transforming financial disadvantage into legal
disadvantage. The consequence is that justice
becomes dependent not upon the merits of a case, but upon
the financial resources of the parties.
A justice
system that allows legitimate claims to be stopped before
trial because of a person’s financial circumstances
undermines public confidence in the courts and weakens the
principle that everyone is equal before the law. Protecting
defendants from unrecoverable costs is an important
objective, but it should never be pursued in a way that
effectively closes the courthouse doors to those seeking
justice.
Helen
Houghton
Conservative Party
Leader
