Climate Tort Prohibition: Submission Hub

The Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill would block tort claims against greenhouse gas emitters for climate-related harm, and would do so retrospectively, with the explicit intention of extinguishing Smith v Fonterra and others.

Submissions are now closed on the Tort Prohibition Bill.

Oral submissions are taking place on Tuesday 14 July: List of oral submitters | Livestream link for oral submissions.

We hosted a webinar, breaking down the Tort Prohibition Bill. You can watch the recording of it here if you missed it.

Hear from Mike Smith, Dr David Hall, Dr Bjørn-Oliver Magsig, and Laura MacKay, who will break down the Bill and explain its implications.

Below, we've collated background documents to help you understand the Bill, the case it seeks to extinguish, and related materials. This page will be updated regularly.

• submissions on the Bill

  • Lawyers for Climate Action’s submission.

  • Read our explainer on the Bill here.

  • Both ENDS Submission.

  • Associate Professor Vernon Rive’s submission.

  • Dr Sam Bookman’s submission.

  • Amnesty International New Zealand’s submission.

  • New Zealand Women’s Law Journal submission.

• Government materials

  • The full text of the Bill.

  • Proactively released documents from the Ministry of Justice, including Cabinet papers, briefings, and the Regulatory Impact Statement.

    • You can read our initial assessment of these materials here. In short, the picture that emerges from these documents is not a pretty one for the Government. Ministry of Justice officials repeatedly recommended against a statutory bar, found no evidence to support the Minister’s justification of business uncertainty, and strongly recommended against the bar applying retrospectivity to Mr Smith’s case.

    • The Minister's public rationale is that Smith v Fonterra is “creating uncertainty in business confidence and investment". However, the advice he was given was that there is no evidence to support this, and in fact, the bar could create more uncertainty.

  • Media release of the Minister of Justice.

• Understanding smith v fonterra

  • Our explainer sets out the background to Smith v Fonterra.

  • The Courts of New Zealand website page here has all the decisions up to the Supreme Court Decision, as well as the written submissions of counsel in the Supreme Court hearing from 2022: Supreme Court Decision | Court of Appeal Decision | High Court Decision.

    • There have been two interlocutory decisions in the High Court subsequent to the above. You can read these decisions and find out more here.

  • For further background reading, Professor Vernon Rive has a chapter explaining the case: "Common law at the coal face: Smith v Fonterra and others" in Cameron, Galvão Ferreira & Weyman (eds) Climate Change Litigation Cases in Context (Elgar 2026) ch 4 - Academic analysis.

• Lobbying & process concerns

  • RNZ’s Lillian Hanly has a timeline of who knew what, when here.

  • Refer to the Environmental Law Initiative’s website here, which sets out the issues relating to undisclosed corporate lobbying of the Prime Minister’s Office. Of particular note, on 1 July 2026, the Ombudsman released his final opinion on the treatment of ELI’s OIA requests to the Prime Minister’s Office and found that the decision on the original OIA request was unreasonable.

  • The proactively released Ministry of Justice documents (under Government materials, above) also bear on the process to date.

  • Lawyers for Climate Action’s commentson the corporate lobbying.

• Expert commentary

  • Open letter from over 150 leading NGOs, academics and others to the New Zealand Government regarding the Tort Prohibition.

  • Bjørn-Oliver Magsig & Graeme Austin“Changing climate law to prevent civil cases removes a key protection for NZ citizens” (May 2026) provides a short accessible overview of some of the key issues.

  • Stephen Young, Ben Tombs and Ben France-Hudson “Climate law change is a dangerous trade-off” (May 2026).

  • Sam Bookman “Climate litigants should be allowed their day in court” (May 2026).

submissions due 13 july at 9:00am

submissions due 13 july at 9:00am

Notes:

• This page will be updated regularly.

• Please contact Molly at molly@lawyersforclimateaction.nz if you have any questions or have any sources, including submissions, you think may be useful to be on this page.