Tenantcheck Insights · Case study
Tenancy Tribunal case 5395402 — Exemplary damages
Decided 12 Mar 2026 · Published 12 Mar 2026 · Application 5395402
- Exemplary damages
Party names are redacted in the official published order. This page summarises the dispute only — not individual identities.
At a glance
Key facts from the published tribunal order.
Adjudicator
K Stirling
Claims & awards
What this tenancy cost at tribunal — claim, category, amount, and party awarded, with reconciled net total.
No individual claim amounts were reconciled for this order. View the official Ministry of Justice PDF for full detail.
Order
- The Tribunal orders suppression of the Tenant and the Landlord name and identifying details.
- The application is struck out.
Reasons
- The landlord respondent attended the hearing by telephone.
- I am satisfied that the applicant tenant was served with the notice of hearing containing instructions for joining the hearing by telephone or video and he did not join. The Tribunal also attempted to telephone him for the hearing on the cell phone number he provided in his application but the number disconnected. I am satisfied that the tenant failed to attend the hearing.
- The applicant tenant filed an application for compensation and exemplary damages regarding the tenancy. It was not clear on the application exactly the basis for his claims, although it was evident that he was dissatisfied with the manner in which the landlord terminated the tenancy with a 90-day notice.
- The landlord advised that she thought all issues regarding the tenancy had already been determined by a previous Tenancy Tribunal order under application 5356944 and 5354923 and that the tenant should not be allowed to bring this application. I find that she is correct.
- I have reviewed the order made by the Tenancy Tribunal under application 5356944 and 5354923 dated 28 October 2025. The Tribunal made various consent orders. However, order 2 provides: In settlement of all claims either party may have against the other arising from the tenancy, the parties have agreed to divide the bond of $1,800.00 equally between them.
- It is clear that the orders made, and division of the bond, was in full and final settlement of all claims either party had against the other in relation to the tenancy. That means that neither party may come back to the Tribunal with any further claims against the other in relation to this tenancy.
- The prohibition on bringing further claims is contained in the common law principle known as “res judicata” a Latin phrase meaning “a matter adjudged.”
- In Flood v LJ Hooker 1 , the Court, considered “res judicata” and referred to the definition in by Spencer, Bower, Turner & Handly, Res Judicata (3rd ed) 1996, Butterworths, paragraph 1 where it stated: "In English law a res judicata is a decision pronounced by judicial tribunal having jurisdiction over the case and the parties which disposes once and for all of all the matters decided, so that except on appeal, they cannot afterwards be re-litigated between the same parties or their privies."
- The Court in Flood noted that it is an abuse of process where a matter has already been litigated to conclusion, and a disgruntled party to that litigation seeks to resurrect it in some other form. The court also referred to the Court of Appeal decision, Fraser v Robinson 2 in which res judicata will also cover: ".....issues so clearly part of the subject matter of the earlier litigation that they could and ought to have been raised and further.... Whenever a party against whom a judgment has been made has failed to raise some question he or she could have raised, the judgment includes a decision on the omitted question. This is because the law imposes a positive obligation on litigants to bring forward their whole case. The law will not hear a litigant to argue later that they have not argued their case carefully or inadvertently or by accident omitted part of their case. This has been the law for a considerable period of time and back to the leading case of Henderson (1843)...... The rule in Henderson v Henderson is very well known. It requires the parties, when a matter becomes the subject of litigation between them in a Court of competent jurisdiction, to bring their whole case before the Court so that all aspects of it may be finally decided, (subject, of course, to any appeal) once and for all. In the absence of special circumstances, the parties cannot return to the Court to advance arguments, claims or defences which they could have put forward for decision on the first occasion but failed to raise. The rule is not based on the doctrine of res judicata in a narrow 1 Flood v LJ Hooker, Gisborne District Court, 28 October 2009,CIV-2009-016-248 2 Fraser v Robinson [1991] 3 NZLR 257 at 260 sense, nor even on any strict doctrine of issue or cause of action estoppel. It is a rule of public policy based on the desirability, and the general interest as well as that of the parties itself, that litigation should not drag on forever and that a defendant should not be oppressed by successive suits when one would do. That is the abuse at which the rule is directed."
- Having regard to the previous Tribunal order, the principle of res judicata and the rule in Henderson, the tenant’s claims must be struck out.
- Because both parties names and identifying details were suppressed under the previous order, I suppress them again now. However, should the tenant apply again for orders concerning this tenancy, when I have now made it clear that to do so would be an abuse of process, the Tribunal would likely not grant him suppression again.