Victoria is an accomplished advocate for her clients both in courts, and in front of local and central government.
Her background is in general commercial litigation but she has particular expertise in judicial review, administrative law, public law, and regulatory litigation and enforcement.
Victoria’s clients are predominantly large corporates in the energy, airport, media, banking and financial services industries.
Victoria also heads Chapman Tripp’s Public Law team, helping clients to manage the intersection of government, politics and regulation. She works closely with senior executives and Boards to achieve their strategic objectives and promote business development, using her substantive expertise to identify and mitigate current and emerging legal risk.
Victoria aims to develop long-term relationships with clients, enabling her to deliver proactive advice, relevant to the clients’ commercial objectives. She frequently assists clients to develop strategies to avoid litigation through compliance advice and training, regulatory engagement, negotiation, and legislative and policy change.
Recent Experience
- Acting for Transpower New Zealand Limited in its successful judicial review of the Commerce Commission’s determination of its regulated cost of capital.
- Acting for Television New Zealand Limited in successfully defending litigation by a candidate in the Te Tai Tokerau byelection seeking to participate in a television debate.
- Assisting a major retail bank to manage legal risk around default and credit fees, including management of a Commerce Commission investigation, legal advice to support the development of pricing strategies, and assistance in preparing submissions on relevant legislative change.
- Providing strategic and legal advice around landing fee charges to a number of regional airports. This included advising on competition law issues in the general aviation markets, assessment of regulatory risk, advising on administrative law obligations, and management of consultation processes so as to reduce the chance of successful judicial review.
- Representing Wellington International Airport on its appeal against the Commerce Commission’s determination of the input methodologies to apply to regulated airports. This matter has not yet been heard.
- Advising Orion New Zealand Limited in relation to a variety of regulatory and public law issues arising from the Canterbury earthquakes, including the application of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act 2011, and the scope and application of the price path provisions to Orion.