Misleading Conduct before the Federal Court: Achievements and Challenges

Abstract

The fundamental norm against misleading others has assumed particular dominance in the Australian private law landscape. The categorical statutory prohibition on conduct that is misleading or ‘likely to mislead’ was introduced in s 52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) (‘TPA’), subsequently s 18 of the Australian Consumer Law (‘ACL’), along with wide-ranging accompanying remedies. As the then Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia, Michael Black, noted in his essay on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Federal Court, the statutory prohibition on misleading conduct has been of considerable importance to the history and evolution of the Court. It ‘introduced a fundamenta..