Keeping Business in the Groove
Date Added: 1st January 2011 from Employers' Chamber of Commerce Central
Competition is good too, keeping prices down, helping innovative businesses become winners and keeping the incumbents on their toes.
Of course a few carefully considered laws and regulations backed by effective enforcement are essential. A regulatory framework provides business and customers with the confidence to trade and make contracts with each other.
In summary good rules well enforced protect competition, and deliver fair trade and fair workplaces.
It’s a lot like driving on the road. If every one knows that New Zealanders drive on the left - all goes well. If some drivers decide the right is OK or decide to drink and drive we have a problem, and law enforcement agencies take swift action.
Trouble is can we be sure of the business rules these days? If one of our stronger businesses drifts over the centre line can we have the same confidence that business law will be enforced swiftly and effectively?
Getting a commercial case to court can take years, and if one party chooses to exploit all the opportunities for delay or complication it can cost eye watering amounts of money.
By the time a reluctant and often well funded defence team exhausts its opportunities to drag a case out, the plaintiff’s original bad behaviour and resultant damage to the defendant may well be a distant and unrepairable memory.
Over time the consequences can be serious for all of us. If we cannot be confident of the timely and cost enforcement of commercial rules business becomes informal or stops and our smaller innovative businesses can only stop on the side of the road.
The modern Court system does have systems in place to streamline and fast track its processes but at the end if the day, getting justice is still only as fast as the slowest link in the chain. What businesses need is for the commercial court to take a very robust line with litigants. This means greater emphasis on fast tracking processes, tough enforcement of time lines and in particular discovery rules and other procedural matters. Businesses want fast and efficient dispute settlement procedures – either within the judical framework or alternative processes whenever possible.
As a wise person once said justice delayed is justice denied.
