Assignment title: Information
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. (One class assignment in a previous trimester resorted to this technique and
was awarded 2/20; as a result all the members of the group failed the subject.)
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
The questions to be answered
Your report will be marked out of a total of 20. 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]