Legal Problems of Inflation

The article reviews the efforts by Governments, Courts and professional accounting bodies to mitigate the hugely damaging effects of the high inflation of the 1970s and 1980s on the economy and the wider public. The Consumer Price Index brings out that impact recording that in 1990 a New Zealand dollar was worth less than one-eighth its value in 1970.The article traces the development of the treatment of inflation by those bodies during that period and by the Courts since then. It goes on to highlight various areas of the law where inflation has continued to cause problems, focusing on contract and commercial law, damages in tort, taxation and succession to property including trusts, wills and family breakdown