The ex-MD/CEO of Bingo Industries (Bingo) has pleaded guilty to a charge of aiding and abetting criminal price fixing conduct. The price fixing took the form of an agreement between Bingo and its competitor Aussie Skip Bin Services to fix and increase prices to supply skip bins for building and...
Mercedes-Benz Australia fined for downplaying risk of faulty airbags! In an Australian first for product safety law compliance, the Federal Court has fined Mercedes-Benz Australia/Pacific Pty Ltd (Mercedes-Benz) a hefty $12.5 million for not using attention-grabbing language when communicating...
18 December 2020 For some time, KIA has led the Australian market for new car warranty ‘generosity’. Its 7-year/unlimited kilometre warranty pressured leading makes such as Toyota and Hyundai to increase their warranty length from 3 years/100,00 km to 5 and 7 years to compete. Under the KIA...
In September 2019 the Federal Government deleted section 51(3) from the Competition and Consumer Act (CCA). This section had exempted some IP transactions from the rules against anti-competitive conduct. IP transactions will now be governed by the basic CCA ban that prohibits conduct with the...
The Federal Court of Australia has decided that some conditions in Ashley & Martin’s standard form contracts are unfair and therefore void. Ashley and Martin is an Australian company that offers hair loss treatment programs to customers through its clinics in Australia, New Zealand and...
Following an ACCC investigation, Uber Eats has undertaken to change its standard restaurant contract to remove clauses by which it claimed the right to deduct delivery-related compensation payments from amounts payable by it to restaurants for meals prepared. In reality, such restaurants had no...
The Federal Court has imposed a $2.6 million penalty on Ultra Tune for false and misleading statements made to a prospective franchisee about the franchise price, the rent of the relevant premises, the age of the franchise and that a $33,000 deposit was refundable.Ultra Tune also breached the...
The Federal Court has decided that adding imported ingredients to capsules in Australia does not allow the manufacturer to properly claim they are "Australian-made". It rejected the Nature's Care company's argument that their capsules were "substantially transformed" by the addition of imported...
Fitness First Australia has paid a $12,600 penalty to the ACCC for breaching the excessive surcharge provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act. Fitness First had imposed a 50 cent surcharge on $46 fortnightly memberships paid using credit and debit cards, between December 2017 and April...
A fly-in/fly-out truckie, having worked 4 years at a large Queensland mine site, where his work consisted of 12 hour shifts on a 7 days on/7 days off roster at a flat hourly rate, successfully applied to the Federal Court-supported by the CFMEU- for paid leave exceeding $20,000. According to...
