Introduction to Business Law
ASSIGNMENT
Topic: Contract and Consumer Law
Task Details: Students are to analyse the given information, and draw relevant, supported
conclusions and make justified recommendations. Responses are to be formatted into a professional report, as would be expected of someone working in a modern accountants office.
Presentation: 1200 word report - .doc or .docx – short report format
Title page, executive summary, table of contents, suitable headings and
subheadings, conclusions/recommendations, reference list (Harvard – Anglia style).
Research requirements: Students must support their analysis and recommendations with the text and a minimum of 4 current, relevant, academic journal articles. Additional sources may also be used but students need to demonstrate awareness of the academic reliability of such sources.
General instructions
Students are required to read a decision of the High Court of Australia and then report on the “ratio” for that decision in response to specific questions
The length is to be no more than 1200 words
The case
The case for study is
AUSTRALIAN COMPETITION AND CONSUMER COMMISSION [APPELLANT] v TPG INTERNET PTY LTD [RESPONDENT]
which was decided in December 2013
A PDF of the High Court’s judgment has been loaded separately.
(continue)
BUS 101 – INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS LAW – trimester 0215
ASSIGNMENT - CASE STUDY
Some extra guidance
To avoid confusion about the roles played by the various courts which heard this dispute I provide these additional notes
The sequence of court hearings
• The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) brought proceedings against internet provider TPG because of an advertising campaign for internet services TPG had been conducting.
• Initially, the proceedings were heard by a single judge, who is referred to in the judgment as -the primary judge-. ACCC was largely successful against TPG in those proceedings.
• TPG, having lost the case before the primary judge, appealed to three judges, referred to in the judgment as the “Full Court-. That court largely disagreed with the conclusions of the primary judge and set aside his decision. In effect, TPG won its appeal to the Full Court.
• This left ACCC as the loser. It appealed to the High Court, which disagreed with the conclusions of the Full Court in favour of TPG and essentially reinstated the decision made by the primary charge in favour of ACCC.
The judgment you are reading, and to which the assignment questions relate, is the judgment of the High Court only. However, to enable the -ratio- of its decision to be understood, the High Court includes in its judgment summaries of the reasons which the primary judge and the Full Court each gave in coming to their respective (and contradictory) decisions.
The questions in this assignment
The questions you are required to answer are designed to enable you to express your own understanding of what the three courts separately determined. However, as I have said on a number of occasions, this is not a cut and paste exercise. It is not possible to answer the questions simply by locating the relevant paragraphs in the judgment and copying them into your answer.
You must express your answer in your own words and to enable the tutors marking the assignments to be sure that you have done this you should state, in brackets at the end of your answers to each question, the paragraph numbers from the judgment you have referred to in preparing your answer.
I encourage you to express answers in either numbered or bullet point form rather than long paragraphs
Word limit is about 1200 words
(continue)
The questions to be answered
The marks available for each separate question are stated in square brackets
1 Briefly describe the nature of TPG’s advertising which ACCC considered to be defective [3 marks]
2 What statutory provisions did ACCC allege that TPG’s advertising contravened [2 marks]
3 What were the findings (conclusions) of the primary judge about the following aspects of the advertising [3 marks total]
• bundling
• the set up fee
• single price
4 What were the differences between the approach of the Full Court and the approach of the primary judge in evaluating whether the TPG advertising was misleading? [2 marks]
5 The High Court concluded that the approach taken by the Full Court was not correct. For what reason or reasons did the High Court come to this conclusion? [2 marks]
6 The Full Court, in coming to its conclusions, applied as a precedent the ratio in a case called Parkdale Custom Built Furniture v Puxu (“Puxu”). The High Court said that the Full Court wrongly applied the precedent in Puxu. Explain in what ways the High Court thought the advertising in Puxu was different from the TPG advertising and so should not have been used by the Full Court as a precedent. [2 marks]
7 What did the High Court say about the assumed level of knowledge in TPG’s target audience? [2 marks]
8 Is an intention to mislead essential for advertising to be misleading? [1 mark]
9 If you were employed in the marketing section of an internet service provider or a fitness centre which was about to launch an advertising campaign promoting an attractive “plan” for membership in which there were several “parts” (costs and benefits) to be taken into account by potential customers, what advice would you give about the form of the advertising, based on your understanding of the High Court’s ruling in ACCC v TPG? [3 marks]
September 2015