Santamaria v Television New Zealand Ltd [2026] NZEmpC 210 - lawyer-led workplace review was not legally privileged

In ongoing litigation between Kamahl Santamaria and Television New Zealand Limited, the Employment Court dealt with disclosure and non-publication rather than the merits of the parties' substantive claims. TVNZ argued that the Robins Report was protected by legal advice privilege because an employment lawyer had prepared it. The Court disagreed.

The Robins review followed Santamaria's departure

Mr Santamaria joined TVNZ's Breakfast programme in April 2022. A settlement agreement was signed on 28 May 2022 and his employment ended by resignation on 31 May.

Following public reporting about his recruitment and departure, the Minister of Broadcasting wrote to the TVNZ Board seeking assurances about recruitment and conduct policies. TVNZ's General Counsel engaged employment lawyer Margaret Robins to carry out an independent review of recruitment practices and related processes. The resulting document became known as the Robins Report.

This judgment was interlocutory

Mr Santamaria later brought substantive claims alleging breaches of employment duties and the settlement agreement. TVNZ denies those claims and has counterclaimed. Those merits were not decided in this judgment.

The issues before the Court were narrower. Mr Santamaria sought disclosure of an unredacted copy of the Robins Report and related documents. TVNZ relied on legal advice privilege and separately sought broad non-publication protection for current and former staff.

A lawyer's involvement did not create privilege

The Court examined the substance and purpose of the review rather than the professional status of its author. The terms of reference were directed to reviewing TVNZ's policies, recruitment decisions and workplace-complaints processes against internal policy objectives and good-practice benchmarks.

There was no sufficient legal context showing that the report was created for the purpose of giving legal advice. The Court therefore held that the Robins Report did not attract legal advice privilege. The fact that an experienced employment lawyer conducted the review was not determinative.

Public summary also raised waiver

TVNZ had publicly released a summary of the Robins Report when the review was completed. The Court held that, even if its primary conclusion on privilege were wrong, the public use of the report's conclusions raised a further waiver problem.

A party cannot necessarily deploy the favourable substance of a report publicly while preserving the underlying report from disclosure as privileged. Waiver remains context-specific, but the way privileged material is used can be as important as how it was originally created.

General privacy concerns did not justify blanket suppression

TVNZ also sought non-publication orders protecting the identities and details of current and former staff. The Court applied the open-justice approach used in Employment Court proceedings.

General assertions of privacy, embarrassment or reputational harm were not enough to establish the specific adverse consequences required to justify departure from open justice. The application therefore failed at the first stage of the test.

Why this case matters

For workplace investigations and reviews, Santamaria is a valuable drafting and commissioning case. If legal privilege is genuinely required, the purpose, retainer and work product need a real legal-advice context; using a lawyer as the reviewer is not sufficient on its own. The judgment is also a caution against assuming that ordinary employee privacy interests will automatically produce broad non-publication orders in the Employment Court.

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Read the official source

The Employment Court's public source for this judgment is linked below. A stable direct PDF URL was not used here unless independently verified.

Source: Employment Court judgment and related public material.