Climate Tort Prohibition: Submission Hub
The Government is seeking to shield major emitters from liability for climate change damage through the Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill.
The Bill would bar civil claims in tort against greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters for climate-related harm, and would do so retrospectively, explicitly intending to extinguish Smith v Fonterra, a live case that the Supreme Court unanimously cleared for trial in 2024. This is a case against New Zealand’s largest corporate emitters, brought by Mike Smith.
You can now make a submission on the Bill - the deadline is the 13 July 2026. Anyone can make a submission. Check back here for the deadline and an explainer of the Bill from Lawyers for Climate Action shortly.
submissions due 13 july
submissions due 13 july
This page collates the key documents so you can understand the Bill, the case it seeks to end, and how it came about. We will update this page regularly.
Useful Materials
Government Materials
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.
Understanding Smith v Fonterra - the case the Bill seeks to extinguish
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.
Professor Vernon Rive, "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, open access.
Lobbying and 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.
On 1 July 2026 the Ombudsman released his final opinion into 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 comments on the corporate lobbying.
Expert commentary and statements
Open letter from over 150 leading NGOs, academics and others to the New Zealand Government.
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 on the Bill
We will upload relevant submissions on the Bill here.
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.