Publication
Keeping your dawn raid guidance current
Unannounced inspections or ‘dawn raids’ are used by antitrust authorities to obtain evidence when there are suspicions that individuals or businesses have infringed the antitrust rules.
Author:
Global | Publication | October 20, 2017
In the ACCC’s first successful case under the new business-to-business unfair contract terms provisions, the Federal Court has declared (by consent) that eight terms of the standard form contracts of JJ Richards & Sons Pty Ltd (JJ Richards) for waste disposal are unfair, and therefore void, where the other party is a small business.
The unfair contract terms provisions1, which previously only applied to consumers, were extended in November 2016 to cover small businesses. In early 2017, the ACCC announced that ensuring small businesses received the protection of the unfair contract terms law would be a key enforcement and compliance priority for 2017. Since then, the ACCC has commenced proceedings against JJ Richards and one other company.
The terms the court declared to be unfair and void related to:
In declaring the terms to be unfair, Justice Moshinsky also declared that “the Impugned Terms tend to exacerbate each other, increasing the overall imbalance between the parties and the risk of detriment to JJR Customers.”
The case of JJ Richards should act as a reminder for companies to review their business-to-business standard form contracts for compliance with the unfair contract terms provisions.
Sections 23-28 of the Australian Consumer Law (Schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth)).
Publication
Unannounced inspections or ‘dawn raids’ are used by antitrust authorities to obtain evidence when there are suspicions that individuals or businesses have infringed the antitrust rules.
Publication
In the recent decision of Baldoo Dharamdav Parbanath v The Incorporated Management Committee of Aberdeen Technical School [2024] HKCFI 1276, the Hong Kong courts considered the legality of the summary dismissal of a teacher who failed to return to Hong Kong during the pandemic.
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