Her father made her a director at 18, then took the kiwifruit company to the Authority
Authority member Simon Greening ruled on 9 July 2026 that a nominee director installed at 18 is not personally liable for her company's wage breaches.
When F100 Limited, a small kiwifruit contracting company in the Tauranga region, was incorporated in September 2016, its sole director was 18. She was the daughter of the man who ran the business, and she told the Authority she had never set foot on an orchard and understood little of what her father did day to day.
Years later it was her father, the company's supervisor, and her stepmother, its bookkeeper, who took F100 to the Authority. In November 2025 the pair sought wage arrears and unpaid statutory entitlements after the business stopped operating around 2023. F100 did not appear at the investigation.
The father claimed he was owed overtime of at least 10 hours a week across the seven years he worked for F100, on top of the 70 hour weeks his payslips recorded at $24 an hour. Greening was not persuaded, noting the father was responsible for his own time and for keeping the wages and time record book, which was never produced, and that there was no evidence he had raised any non payment with his daughter, the director, during his employment. The overtime claim failed.
The stepmother's claim succeeded in part. She said she had worked unpaid as bookkeeper from 2016, but Greening found she had assisted between 2016 and 2018 on the basis...
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