Show me the honey: Manuka Doctor wins court fight over DJ Nervo’s $878,000 legal fees

The Court of Appeal ruling means Pringle does not have to pay the bulk of Nervo’s legal costs. Court papers have said his own costs were $920,674.

The judgment recounted details of Nervo and Pringle’s relationship from 2016 until 2019, when she travelled to New Zealand to discover he was in a long-term relationship with another woman he had a child with – and that woman was also pregnant.

Nervo and Pringle split and their daughter was born three months later in 2019.

Lady Justice King described Pringle as coming from “an extremely wealthy family”. His mother is Lyn Erceg, widow of liquor baron Michael Erceg. She has an estimated $1.5 billion fortune. Pringle himself owns Manuka Doctor, Honey New Zealand and a host of other businesses.

With her twin sister Mim, Nervo is one half of the electronic dance music duo “Nervo”. She was also described by the court as “wealthy”.

Lady Justice King said the public reach afforded by Nervo’s fame, and her desire to use it, was a “tension” in the court proceedings. The DJ duo’s Instagram has more than a million followers.

“A key underlying tension in the proceedings has related to the mother’s desire to tell her fans what has happened to her, as against the father’s desire to maintain privacy for himself, [their daughter] and his New Zealand family.”

It was a conflict she said “sat uneasily” with an agreement between Nervo and Pringle that he should have a relationship with their daughter, and Nervo’s insistence Pringle should enable their child to have a relationship with her half-sisters and his family – including his partner and mother.

Lady Justice King said it was “a source of considerable discord” that Pringle’s family was unwilling to do so until the legal proceedings were finished, and they had reassurance they would face no further exposure through Nervo’s social media.

Years of legal discussion over financial issues, and how Pringle would meet their daughter, were set against his “significant concerns” over privacy, which were seen by Nervo as “attempts to silence her and to prevent her from ‘telling her story’”.

The court ruling revealed Nervo and Pringle engaged in therapy sessions to work out how they would manage co-parenting their daughter, but the sessions were paused in July 2021 with the therapist writing “financial issues have a habit of hijacking the positive intent of each parent”.

At that time, Nervo’s lawyers said she would re-engage once financial matters were resolved, but that Pringle would also have to show commitment to integrating their daughter with his New Zealand family.

Pringle had offered to buy a $6.3m property and set up a $42m trust fund for their daughter’s benefit, the judgment said. But dispute over Nervo’s social media use and the publication of an interview she had given led to financial negotiations and therapy stalling.

Pringle went to court in 2022 after years of failed negotiations about contact with their child, asking a judge to formalise his parental rights and contact arrangements.

The judgment said Pringle met with his and Nervo’s daughter for the first time in 2023. Nervo previously told the Herald their daughter was nearly 4 at that meeting.

The meeting came after Pringle again admitted “he had not been honest” with Nervo about “his relationship with his long-term partner and expressed his remorse”. It also followed the appointment of a social worker chosen by Nervo to manage the contact with Pringle.

Lady Justice King said that “although out of the ordinary given the wealth and international lifestyle of the parties”, the case was “on a conventional trajectory”.

The judgment then says that in September 2023 Nervo changed lawyers and the case took on a “wholly different complexion”.

Now, it said, Nervo wanted a fact-finding hearing to prove her allegations of “reproductive coercion and controlling behaviour including gas-lighting, love bombing, blame shifting, future faking and financial abuse through excessive litigation”.

Reproductive coercion is behaviour in a relationship that interferes with a person’s ability to make free decisions about contraception, pregnancy or having children.

The judgment recorded Nervo’s position that she had been entrapped and raped by Pringle “as she did not knowingly give consent to the intercourse on a trueful foundation”.

Despite these allegations, the judgment also recorded that Nervo wanted Pringle to be required to introduce their daughter to her half-siblings and her grandmother Lyn Erceg, and to set up a family group conference in New Zealand between Nervo and Pringle’s families, which both Nervo sisters would attend.

The judgment said Pringle apologised in January 2024 for deceiving Nervo. “He did not seek to excuse or justify his behaviour, but expressed a desire to focus on the future for [their daughter].”

Nervo’s application for a fact-finding hearing was rejected the following month as unnecessary when the agreed objective was Pringle being part of their daughter’s life and that contact had gone well.

The judge described Pringle’s behaviour towards her as “reprehensible” but said it was unlikely he would agree to having engaged in “reproductive coercion, pathological lying, gas-lighting, manipulative deception and rape”.

While rejecting a fact-finding hearing, Pringle was told to set out a schedule of admissions in which “he accepted that he had led the mother to believe they were in a committed, monogamous relationship, that [their daughter’s] pregnancy had been planned and that the mother [Nervo] had discovered the truth when she had travelled to New Zealand on an unannounced trip”.

In making those admissions, Pringle accepted his behaviour constituted “domestic abuse of an emotional nature”.

Lady Justice King said the change in legal strategy by Nervo appeared to have a “significant impact” on both parents and their daughter. Although there was an agreement for Pringle to visit their child, he did not after April 2024, “making what he accepts were weak excuses”.

In August, Pringle sought to withdraw the case he had brought asking the court to determine contact arrangements with his daughter.

Then, in September 2024, Nervo sought to oppose his desire to withdraw, asking the court to order contact between Pringle and their daughter on a monthly basis.

In reference to “wild and unsubstantiated allegations” made by Nervo, the judgment confirmed Pringle’s belief the proceedings were no longer in their daughter’s best interests.

By the end of February 2025, many of the issues had been determined while the court again rejected an attempt by Nervo to explore the history of the relationship.

The only remaining substantive issue before the court was the question of legal costs as their collective bills spiralled towards $2m.

That decision came in May 2025, alongside a Transparency Order, limiting reporting to protect the child’s identity until adulthood.

The court ordered Pringle to pay 75% of Nervo’s legal costs, and confirmed a transparency order prohibiting reporting of the proceedings to protect the child’s identity until adulthood.

Pringle appealed the decision on costs – a decision that propelled the case into a courtroom environment where his and Nervo’s identities were no longer protected.

The Court of Appeal described Pringle’s behaviour as “shameful and deceitful” and acknowledged the continuing distress it had caused Nervo.

The appeal judges said costs orders in disputes involving children were rare.

“The judge fell into error in considering only the conduct of the father and not that of the mother,” Lady Justice King said.

If the judge had considered both, the court said he would have had to factor in Nervo’s unsuccessful application for a fact-finding hearing over Pringle’s behaviour, and her later attempt to revive those allegations “under the guise of opposing the father’s application to withdraw his application for a child arrangements”.

The Court of Appeal ruled there should be “no order for costs”.

Lady Justice King said the lower court judge had relied on four issues to justify the costs order against Pringle.

Those included claims Pringle had partly been motivated by a desire to protect his privacy when bringing proceedings, that he withdrew parts of his application late in the process, and that he had failed to attend two hearings.

The court also said Pringle had changed his position late in the case – initially opposing restrictions on future applications before agreeing to them – and had also attempted to introduce new evidence at a late stage.

But the Court of Appeal said those factors did not meet the threshold required for such an order.

The Herald approached Pringle for comment through his lawyers but none has been received.

Nervo told the Herald the proceedings had been forced upon her and had highlighted the way legal battles could play out between people with unequal power and resources.

Nervo said one positive outcome from the litigation was Pringle’s admission that his behaviour amounted to domestic abuse.

She said she hoped the case would contribute to the broader recognition of coercive behaviour in relationships.

“Without stronger protections, mothers and children will continue to be expected to quietly endure abuse – to slink away in shame, to disappear.”

The move to the Court of Appeal and loss of anonymity for Nervo and Pringle led to the DJ being cast as the public face of a campaign against the alleged use of the law and secrecy to protect powerful men accused of abuse.

The campaign, led by the Good Law Project charity, said it was helping Nervo “tell her story” after years of litigation, framing her case as one about consent, reproductive coercion, post-separation abuse and the use of family courts as a tool of control.

David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He first joined the Herald in 2004.

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