University of Otago Faculty of Law students have taken the top two places in this year’s EC Adams Memorial Prize in Land Law.

The prize is awarded for the best piece of writing showing excellence of achievement in the study of land law by a student enrolled for the Degree of Bachelor of Laws (LLB) or Bachelor of Laws (Honours) at all New Zealand universities.

First place went to LLB (Hons) student Hansaka Ranaweera who wrote a case note essay on Green Growth No 2 Ltd v Queen Elizabeth The Second National Trust [2018] NZSC 75.

The runner-up was also from Otago - Clara Sinclair’s entry was entitled “Unfair and unreasonable? Balancing private property rights and the public interest under s 85 of the RMA".

Mr Ranaweera says the case he wrote about piqued his curiosity, and he now hopes to explore this “area where contract law and property overlap” further in future.

“I focused on how some of the judges had finally engaged with the availability of extrinsic evidence to interpret the covenant and whether rectification could be ordered against a successor in title.”

The EC Adams Memorial Prize was established in 2009 in memory of Ernest Claude Adams, who was for many years Registrar-General of Land. The prize has since been administered by the trustees of the EC Adams Memorial Trust.