Hamish Kynaston

Hamish is a partner in our national litigation and employment teams and specialises in employment relations, judicial review, contractual and commercial disputes, health and safety, and education.  Much of Hamish’s work is in the health, education, financial services and energy sectors.  He has a particular interest in the legal and strategic issues that drive collective bargaining, industrial relations, restructuring, mergers and acquisitions.

Hamish regularly advises public and private sector employers, and individual clients on all aspects of employment law, including dismissal, redundancy, collective bargaining, strikes and lockouts, performance management, harassment and stress, health and safety, holidays and leave, discrimination and privacy.  He appears regularly in the Employment Relations Authority and Employment Court, and at mediations.

Hamish has acted on a range of matters contested in the District Court, High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court, and at arbitration.  He regularly advises health care providers, tertiary institutions and regulatory bodies on their statutory, public law and contractual obligations.  Hamish advises professional and industry associations on their rules and disciplinary processes.

Recent work includes:

• Advising a DHB on the employment and related issues around the non-renewal of a home-based support services contract and transfer of affected employees to other providers
• Advising the purchasers on the employment and superannuation aspects of the purchase of the Shell NZ assets (now Z Energy)
• Advising Eastern Institute of Technology on its merger with Tairawhiti Polytechnic, which involved four different collective agreements and various employee protection and technical redundancy provisions
• Advising Sport and Recreation New Zealand (SPARC) on the proposed merger of SPARC's and the North and South Island NZ Sporting Academies' High Performance functions into a single national entity
• Advising a nationwide distributor on the misuse of its confidential information by a competitor.  Urgent proceedings were prepared, but it was not necessary to issue those because of undertakings obtained in place of Court orders
• Advising an internet business on the recovery and protection of its data, including obtaining urgent search orders in the High Court
• Undertaking independent investigations into serious misconduct allegations, and sitting as a panel member on the New Zealand Police Misconduct Panel
• Representing all New Zealand District Health Boards in the Full Court of the Employment Court in a good faith bargaining case brought by the junior doctors union
• Representing all New Zealand District Health Boards in a judicial review application in the High Court concerning the entitlements of low-paid workers in the aged-related residential care sector
• Assisting KiwiRail with the merger of the rail infrastructure and transport business and the merger of the 2 senior management teams
• Drafting an on-line resource, accessible by GPs, that provides user-friendly, practical advice on all aspects of employment law
• Representing employers in Employment Court and Employment Relations Authority cases concerning employees’ entitlements to holidays under the Holidays Act, and their collective agreements
• Assisting a public sector employer with a fraud investigation and the reporting of its findings to the police and relevant regulatory bodies
• Representing a government department in a conflict of interest case in the Employment Relations Authority and Employment Court
• Advising an employer in the manufacturing sector on a major restructuring involving the sale of one of its factories, the transfer of employees to another site and a reduction in working hours.

Hamish has trained as a mediator and is a member of the New Zealand and Wellington District Law Societies’ Employment Law Committees.