Competition & Consumer Protection

Approving a settlement between insurers and group members in an investor class action against lender Axsesstoday, a judge has aired his frustration with expansive confidentiality provisions and deeds that “misapprehend the nature of the court’s role” in dealing with group members’ claims. 

A Melbourne car dealer has largely lost a consumer law case against Honda Australia over its decision to abandon a dealership model, but is set to receive compensation for over 2,600 new vehicles it could have sold if Honda hadn’t ended its five-year contract early.

Two units of insurer IAG have been hit with a class action for allegedly misleading hundreds of thousands of home owners insurance customers about loyalty discounts.

Legal representatives for a company that dobs in fellow cartel members will not generally be permitted in the room when the competition regulator interviews directors, employees and others seeking derivative immunity from prosecution, under proposed amendments to the ACCC’s immunity policy.

Australia’s largest brick manufacturer Brickworks has accused a rival founded by billionaire Len Buckeridge of substantially lessening competition in Western Australia through a 2021 acquisition and engaging in predatory pricing that caused it to shut its doors in the state.

Global Payments’ plan to acquire Sydney software company School Bytes Learning may substantially lessen competition, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has said in outlining preliminary concerns with the deal.

A New South Wales developer’s competition case against NSW Ports over a ports privatisation agreement looks bound for the High Court after a judge found a related ACCC proceeding did not bar it from bringing the case, which will challenge a Full Court finding that the ports operator was shielded by derivative Crown immunity.

Ramsay Health Care has won a partial interim injunction banning the union representing its nurses from running ads that claim the private hospital operator runs on a staff-to-patient ratio double that of public hospitals.

Consumers are “generally unaware” of the extent to which data firms and third parties mine and utilise their data, according to a report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. 

The Northern Territory public housing authority has moved to throw out a class action’s claims that it engaged in racial discrimination by failing to maintain public housing in remote Aboriginal communities.