Business Law: The Case Of ACC V. Coles (2014)

Introduction to Business Law Introduction

Now-a-days, people having higher bargaining power are engaging into acts that are unconscionable, in order to attract the consumers and exploit the workers. Such misleading and unconscionable acts of the businessmen, suppliers etc. are made punishable by the Australian contract and consumer laws and also competition laws in order to maintain fairness in the market. Under the contract law, pre-contractual misrepresentations can provide contractual remedies (Fox & Trebilcock, 2013). That is to say that even before a contract is made, if the person making the promise makes a misrepresentation, due to which the other party accepting the promise shall enter into the contract, in such a case the party that

binding between and against the parties to the contract, how the government is bringing large companies under its periphery through specialised agencies in order to

Coles (2014) discussed above, wherein Kennet complained to the ACCC about Coles misleading conduct, it was also found that Coles was also misusing its bargaining power that it had because of its dominance as it was the second largest retailer of grocery in Australia. Coles had not only been engaged in deliberate and continuous misleading conduct but also unconscionable conduct and had been misusing its market power, by exploiting its suppliers. The second chain of litigation began after ACCC had in its investigation found that Coles had been treating its suppliers in a manner that is not acceptable according to the business standards and commercial dealings. Coles had admitted that it had breached Section 22 of Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Act). Coles had started Active Retail Collaboration Programme and Active Retail collaboration Rebate scheme and established its own supply system, for which it demanded payments from the suppliers and also levied penalty on them for non-payment, late payment, delay in supply, profit gaps, waste (payments that were not a part of the arrangement between Coles and the suppliers) etc., which it was not authorised to do (Coorey,