Two High Court judges appointed

Associate Judge Robert Osborne and barrister and solicitor Ian Gault have been appointed as judges of the High Court, Attorney-General David Parker has announced.

Appointed as associate judge 2009, Osborne will sit, as he did as an associate judge, in Christchurch. He earned his LLB (Hons) in 1975 and his LLM in 1980 from the University of Canterbury. He was a solicitor in Christchurch from 1976 until moving to Hong Kong in 1980 to practice as Crown counsel and then senior Crown counsel.

He moved back to New Zealand in 1985, became a partner at Duncan Cotterill for 21 years, and moved to the independent bar in 2007. He specialised in the latter part of his career on civil and commercial law, trust litigation, and professional discipline.

Also an internationally experienced lawyer, Gault, who will sit in Auckland, finished his LLB (Hons) at Victoria University in 1987 and his LLM at the University of Cambridge in 1989, the same year he joined Clifford Chance in London.

He moved back to New Zealand in 1993 and joined Bell Gully, where he was elevated to partner in 1997. He was admitted as a solicitor in New South Wales in 2001 and is a commissioned officer with the rank of major in the New Zealand Defence Force Reserves.

He is an expert in commercial dispute resolution and regulatory proceedings, with particular experience in trade practices, IP, international trade, insurance, cybersecurity, public law, and trusts.