Experience & Expertise

Mediation

Phillip is a professional who is thorough, careful and brings a compassionate approach to his work. He really cares about what people think and feel when confronting the hard issues. He brings a high level skill base with intellectual depth and experience. Phillip is at all times conscious of the need to work efficiently and to be cost effective. He has the ability to “think outside the square” – an attribute which has often aided in resolving a difficult case. He enjoys working with parties to turn the “impossible” around to the “possible” so achieving sound settlement outcomes which will continue to live beyond the mediation.
 
Phillip has extensive experience as counsel in mediations and as a mediator. He knows the process from both points of view.
 
Phillip works to be a good communicator to assist the parties to understand each other.

He is a realistic optimist.
 
Phillip recognises the high value that counsel have to offer in the dispute resolution process, and he supports that. He is a good listener. He is protective of all participants to ensure that no-one comes to harm through the process. He respects the participants, their values, their differences and what they bring to the issues around the table. He has an ability to connect with people. He understands litigation tactics and strategies and respects them.
 
Phillip likes to reassure the parties that: “I will not give up. I will keep working to help you find a way forward.”

On the very few occasions, where disputes do not settle Phillip strives to inject positive outcomes from the process. That may be through reducing the issues left for litigation, or by enhancing an appreciation of the other viewpoint as a means of encouraging settlement at a later date.
 
Phillip’s mediation practise includes mediating complex community disputes and expert witness conflict issues. He is also able to co-mediate with a colleague allowing for gender balanced mediations where that is an issue. This can be achieved for very little additional cost.

 

Arbitration

Phillip is a Chartered Arbitrator and has some 30 years of arbitration experience. That experience spans acting as counsel and arbitrator in a large range of arbitrations.
 
Phillip has been appointed to act as arbitrator in an international forestry arbitration and has also acted as counsel under the ICC rules in Paris for a multi-million dollar electrical/mechanical engineering international arbitration.
 
He has sat as sole arbitrator and as an arbitral tribunal member together with retired members of the judiciary.

Phillip has sat as arbitrator on disputes involving commercial issues, construction issues, farm management issues, valuation issues, and the like. He has also sat as Review Officer for Land Information New Zealand on numerous staff restructuring appointments and non-appointments. His arbitration experience includes infrastructure arbitrations such as the Kapuni gas pipeline, local authority road construction contracting, and civil engineering generally, and arbitrations involving the various NZS civil engineering standards. Other arbitrations include valuation arbitrations and house construction.

Green & Hunt on Arbitration Law and Practice, first published in 1993 and re-published by Thomson Brookers in 2006, is authored by Phillip Green and his co-author Barbara Hunt. Specialist contributors are Tómas Kennedy-Grant QC (the International section) and Penny Mudford (rural arbitration). It is regarded as the leading work on arbitration practice and procedure in New Zealand.

He is a contributing author to the text Arbitration Procedures in Asia, Sweet and Maxwell (Hong Kong) 1999.

 

Litigation

Phillip is a senior litigator with significant first instance and appellate court experience. His litigation experience is extensive and covers the following fields:

• Administrative Law
• Arbitration
• Banking
• Civil
• Commercial
• Commissions of Inquiry
• Construction
• Employment
• Energy
• Engineering (Electrical/Mechanical and Civil)
• Environment
• Estates
• I.T.
• Insurance
• Local authority
• Partnerships
• Public law, including judicial review
• Private prosecutions
• Resource Management Act
• Treaty of Waitangi
• Disciplinary tribunals