Australian Consumer Law Case Study

1213 Words5 Pages

2,700 to 3,300 words maximum

1.1 Introduction s18 of the Australian Consumer Law (“ACL”), which forms schedule 2 of the Australian Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) analogously with s52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) (“TPA”) provides that the liability of misleading or deceptive conduct is expressed in general laws. Karl Llewellyn outlined that this provision should be read ‘in the light of some assumed purpose’ , and this essay will examine the importance and scope of s18, as well as the relevance of the legal ruling in relation to misleading and deceptive conduct in trade and commerce.

The appeal case of Google Inc v Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (“Google v ACCC”) examined whether publishing or displaying …show more content…

In the case, searches studied from 2005 to 2008 dealing with the above mentioned companies found that when using Google’s “Adwords Program” advertisers can elect to trigger a sponsored link and use words- phrases- etc to trigger these links when individuals make a search on Google related to these words- phrases - etc. In one example the search for “Harvey World Travel” one of the sponsored links at the right hand side was to the STA travel web site. The FFC amounted this to be misleading deceptive conduct by …show more content…

He outlined that this is not limited to simply the truth of the statement itself but the context in which it is explored… “although a statement which is literally true may nevertheless convey another meaning which is untrue, and be proscribed accordingly.”

2.5 Ordinary and Reasonable Google User
In order to consider what conduct could be deemed misleading or deceptive; the High Court was forced to consider who the ordinary and reasonably user of the search engine and whether or not they would be harmed by a contravention of s52.

The application of the four step test outlined in Taco Co of Australia Inc v Taco Bell Ty Ltd by Deane and Fitzgerald JJ allowed the relevant identification of the target audience or the applicable section of the public. This included examining the astute, the gullibly, the poor, the educated, the intelligent and not so intelligent and whether those members of the public could be led into error .

The ACCC submitted that users were mislead because Good had complete control on how the ads were displayed, in what order, when they would appear and with what tpe of headline