Sherridan Cook

Sherridan is a litigation partner who leads the Auckland employment team.  He has specialised in employment law and commercial litigation for over 15 years.

He advises a wide range of private and public sector clients on the full ambit of employment law issues, including mergers and acquisitions and major restructurings, personal grievances, disciplinary processes, holidays and leave, health and safety, privacy, discrimination and the drafting of employment agreements and policies.  Sherridan has considerable strength in industrial relations and employment related litigation, including confidentiality and restraint of trade disputes. 

Sherridan also has extensive experience in a wide range of corporate, construction and property litigation matters, including judicial review and a number of large and complex disputes.

He regularly appears in all levels of the employment and civil courts, and at arbitrations and mediations.  

Recent work includes:

• Strategic industrial relations advice during bargaining, strikes and lock-outs and union related issues, particularly in the public sector for Unitec Institute of Technology and Manukau Institute of Technology, and acting for Unitec, Northtec, Wintec, WITT, Whitireia and BOPP in their bargaining with the Tertiary Education Union.  This included a facilitation in the Employment Relations Authority, and in a dispute over union ballots and bargaining notices heard by a full Court of the Employment Court and on appeal to the Court of Appeal 
• Advising a multinational oil company on all aspects of a major organisational change project throughout New Zealand
• Acting for Precision Tracking (a GPS technology company) in the Employment Relations Authority and Employment Court against its former Managing Director for significant breaches of confidentiality and to enforce his restrictive covenants, together with proceedings against his new employer in the High Court based on conspiracy and inducement of breach of contract
• Successfully acting for Steelpipe NZ in an unjustified dismissal claim brought by an employee who had inadvertently dialled his manager while making disloyal remarks about Steelpipe to a supplier.  Included resisting both the interim reinstatement and substantive proceedings in the Employment Relations Authority
• Acting for Air National in its judicial review of the Civil Aviation Authority's decision to suspend its Air Operating Certificate.  Involved urgent injunction proceedings in the High Court and Court of Appeal
• Counsel for Lab Tests Auckland in successfully defending a judicial review claim by Diagnostic Medlab of the Auckland region DHBs’ RFP for the $560 million Auckland region diagnostic testing contract through the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court.

Sherridan acted as a consultant to the Government Advisory Group on the Holidays Act 2003, and assisted in advising the Department of Labour on its Ministerial review of the Employment Contracts Act 1991.

He is a member of HRINZ (Human Resources Institute of New Zealand), LEADR (Leading Edge Alternative Dispute Resolvers) and the New Zealand Society of Construction Law.

Sherridan is also admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales (2002) and is a qualified Solicitor-Advocate of the Higher Courts of England and Wales (2003).