$9,600 a day and no courtroom to put it in
Wilson Parking is pursuing its former South Island regional manager Peter Turner through the courts after he resigned in September 2023 and launched a competing business, ATE Property Limited, trading as Mainland Parking. Within months, several landlords who had leased carpark sites to Wilson switched to Turner’s new operation.
The allegations go well beyond ordinary post-employment competition. Wilson claims Turner deliberately misused confidential information including lease details and pricing structures, actively solicited Wilson’s landlord clients while still on the payroll, and, most damningly, inserted unusual exit clauses into landlord contracts while still employed, making it easy for those landlords to terminate and re-sign with him once he left.
Wilson told the Employment Court the situation was costing it approximately $9,600 a day, with estimated losses of around $4.4 million. The total claim reportedly exceeds $6 million.
This is not a parking industry story. It is a stress test of New Zealand’s commercial protection framework, and the framework is failing.
The courts cannot decide who should hear it
Wilson tried to pursue ATE Property in the High Court under equitable claims: knowing receipt, knowing assistance, and breach of duty of confidence. These are the causes of action that can result in a court ordering a party to hand over profits or declaring assets held on trust for the wronged party.
In August 2025, Associate Judge Paulsen dismissed those High Court claims, finding that even though they were framed as equitable claims against the company rather than the employees directly, they still arose out of the employment relationship. That meant they fell within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Employment Relations Authority.
The problem is brutal in its simplicity: the ERA may not have the power to award the remedies Wilson needs. The High Court says it cannot hear the case. The ERA may not be equipped to fix it. Wilson found itself with a claim a judge found has merit, and no forum capable of delivering a meaningful outcome.
In September 2025, Judge Helen Doyle granted a freezing order preventing Turner and Mainland Parking from selling or transferring the disputed leases and contracts, but declined Wilson’s bid for an injunction stopping Turner from trading altogether.
Restraint clauses are a comfort blanket, not a shield
The legal tools available to employers look robust on paper. Restraint of trade clauses, confidentiality provisions, fiduciary duty obligations. In practice, they are riddled with enforcement gaps.
In July 2024, the Employers and Manufacturers Association submitted to Parliament opposing the Employment Relations (Restraint of Trade) Amendment Bill, which proposed capping restraint clauses at six months. The EMA argued in 2024 that the Bill “imposes unreasonable limitations on an employer’s ability to safeguard their business and proprietary interests, goodwill, customers, and intellectual property.” It also acknowledged the existing framework’s weakness, noting that “any clauses that are too wide/vague and/or unenforceable are able to be overturned” by the ERA.
Employers face a paradox. Draft a restraint too broadly and it gets struck down. Draft it too narrowly and it offers no real protection. And even a well-drafted clause runs into the enforcement gap the Wilson case exposes.
More competitors, weaker guardrails
New Zealand’s business formation rate is accelerating. Q1 2026 data from the Companies Office shows new company registrations rose 7.4% compared to Q1 2025 and 12.5% compared to Q1 2024. More new competitors entering markets means more opportunities for exactly the kind of post-employment competition at issue here.
Yet the Commerce Commission’s May 2026 State of Competition report found that competition appears to be decreasing in some New Zealand industries over the 22-year period from 2001 to 2023. The Wilson case sits awkwardly in that context. Competition built on allegedly misappropriated information and pre-arranged exit clauses is not the kind that drives productivity or innovation. It is rent extraction with extra steps.
Every service business should be reading this
The vulnerability Wilson Parking exposed is not unique to parking. It exists across agencies, logistics operators, facilities managers, brokers, consultants, IT services firms, and any business where senior staff are the primary relationship-holders with clients.
The risk has three layers. Confidential information walks out the door with every senior departure. Client relationships sit with the person, not the company. And the legal architecture may not deliver effective remedies even when the employer does everything right.
The Wilson case adds a fourth, more alarming dimension: the allegation of active sabotage from the inside. Inserting exit clauses into contracts while still employed is not a post-employment competition problem. It is an insider threat, and standard employment agreements are not designed to catch it in real time.
Business owners should be asking their lawyers one question: if our most senior client-facing person left tomorrow and took our clients with them, what would we actually be able to do about it? The honest answer, based on the Wilson precedent, is probably not enough.
Sources
- Wilson Parking accuses ex-regional manager Peter Turner of using confidential information to set up Mainland Parking (2025-09)
- EMA Submission to Education and Workforce Committee on the Employment Relations (Restraint of Trade) Amendment Bill (2024-07)
- Latest company statistics (2026-04)
- The State of Competition in New Zealand (2026-05-12)
- Wilson Parking locked in multi-million legal fight with ex-employee