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Introduction to Business Law (BUS101) TRIMESTER 1 2016

GROUP ASSIGNMENT – CASE STUDY

General instructions

1 The group assignment is a court case study and is worth 20% of each student’s final mark for the subject

2 Students form their own groups

3 A group must be comprised of no fewer than three, and no more than five, students.

4 Students need not all be in the same tutorial group (ie, students from different tutorials, even tutorials held on different days, may be in the one group)

5 Students are required to read a decision of the High Court of Australia and then report on the “ratio” for that decision by answering specific questions

6 Each group is to submit a joint report for marking. The length is to be no more than 1200 words

7 After the report is marked, each student in the group will receive the same mark out of

20

8 The report must be submitted in both of the following separate ways:

a. an electronic copy must be uploaded to Turnitin (seek advice from the librarians if you do not know how to do this)

b. ONE hard copy only must be handed in to a tutor in week 10 as directed in the course outline; it is not necessary for each group member to hand in a hard copy

 where all group members are in the same tutorial the report should be submitted to that tutor

 where a group is made up of students from more than one tutorial class, students may decide to which tutor they submit the report

 the report will be marked by the tutor to whom it is submitted

The case for study

The case is AUSTRALIAN COMPETITION AND CONSUMER COMMISSION v TPG INTERNET PTY LTD which was decided by the High Court in December 2013

 A PDF of the High Court’s judgment has been loaded separately in this topic box.

 The first step is for students to read the judgment (which is quite long, so start early) carefully.

 The questions for response will be uploaded later in the week.

Extra guidance for students reading the judgment

To avoid confusion about the roles played by the various courts which heard this dispute I provide the following short summary of 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 one judge, who is referred to in the High Court 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 High Court judgment as the “Full Court". The Full 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 largely reinstated the decision made by the primary judge in favour of ACCC.

The judgment you are reading, and to which the case study questions will 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 previously gave in coming to their respective (and contradictory) decisions.

The questions in the case study

The questions will require each group to express its understanding of what the courts determined. Further instruction about how to present answers will be given with the questions.

John Lanser 2 May 2016