Principles of Australian Business Law

Questions: 1. Demonstrate a working knowledge and understanding of the principles of Australian business law within the context of the prescribed readings. 2. Identify and analyse relevant facts, problems and legal issues from a given scenario and develop anargument in response, discussing available options in the context of business law. Answers: (1). In the present commercial industry where rules and regulations are set for every conduct and activities and laws that severally punish the offender of these rules and regulations makes compliance a necessity. Thus for every business or a corporation to be successful and law abiding, complying with the statutory business laws set by the government is a vital responsibility. The term compliance is referred as abiding and following a rule or a law including policies, standards and specifications. Thus, compliance states that the objective of a corporation should include continuous efforts and reasonable step to comply with relevant and statutory laws, rules and regulations. Thus, the first rule of compliance is to identify the laws and rules which are relevant to the concerned individuals business or a corporation. It is an obvious fact that there can be no compliance unless one is aware of what to comply with. Thus, not all business laws apply to every industrial sector, thus identifyi ng the laws that relate to ones business is the primary objective of compliance (Vom Brocke and Rosemann 2010). Once the statutory laws are identified, the classification of business and legal risk becomes easier. It is evident that there is no business or corporation in the world which is risk free or guarantees zero risk. Thus, classification of legal or potential risks which a business or a corporation can face will be very beneficial in preparing future compliance plan. Thus, having a pre-planned strategy along with a well drafted compliance plan can help a business or a corporation to achieve success which is unhindered by legal risk or non-compliance penalties and punishments. However, only formation of a compliance strategy and plan is not enough if the same is not implemented properly and responsibly. No compliance plan can be executed all by itself; it requires the participation of employees, manager, etc (Governatori and Rotolo 2010). Thus, it is the duty of the top management to regularly check and monitor the execution of compliance plan in any business or corporation. Along with m onitoring, regular training of employees making them aware of the changes and amendments which are brought about it compliance rules and laws or internal compliance policies of a company is very important. Additionally, hiring efficient and educated staff that have complete knowledge and know about of compliance laws can be very beneficial to a company. Thus, compliance in the present times is become very vital as the punishment and penalties for non-compliance are very high including attracting criminal liabilities on the top management of a company (Latimer 2012). In Australia, compliance to statutory laws is mandatory and non-compliance attracts huge penalties. The basic laws which any individual or company working in Australia has to comply it with are Property laws, Sale of Goods laws, Consumer Protection laws and Intellectual property laws. In the present case, I run a seafood restaurant with in family in the city of Sydney. The property in which I run my seafood restaurant is held by my family as a freehold property. The Property Law Act 1969 states the rules, regulations and different schemes under which a property can be held in Australia. Under the said law, the property in Australia can be divided into important parts which are real property and personal property. Real property is owned in the form of land whereas personal property is owned in form of chattels. Thus, under the property laws in Australia, property is referred more as a legal rights or possession rights. The land in which I run my restaurant is under complete ownership of my family which we own as fee simple giving us the authority and the legal right to determine how to deal with the said property including the rights to sell, lease, rent, transfer, gift or eliminate the property. Additionally, I own the said property in which I run my family business in common tenancy with my family. Under the Australian Property laws, tenancy in common allows two or more individuals to own a property in common however, there is no right of survivorship in tenancy in common and the owner of the property can gift his share to his heir in his will (Seethamraju 2012). Every food industry business in Australia has to comply with the consumer protection laws. On 1 January 2011, all the individual and state consumer protection laws were brought together to form a single statute which applied to the whole of Australia and was called Australian Consumer Laws. According to the said Act, any individual who purchases goods or services costing $40,000 or less if purchased for domestic use is termed as a consumer. Thus, the said act makes strict laws to protect the interest of the consumers in Australia and section 29(1)(a)(b) of the Australian Consumer Laws state that any goods and services that are availed from a company or service provided is required to be of acceptable quality. Additionally section 54 of the Consumer Protection laws state that as soon as a product is purchased by a customer, he is granted an automatic guarantee that the goods purchased are of accepted quality. Thus, in my sea food restaurant I ensure my best to comply with the consumer laws in Australia by providing hygienic, safe and acceptable quality of food and beverages (Elgammal et al 2012). Lastly, I have recently decided along with my family to name my sea food restaurant as the Great Catch. As I want to pretend other seafood restaurants in the vicinity and in Sydney from having similar name or copying my name, I intend to register my restaurants name along with its logo as the trademark in Australia. Intellectual property is the guarantee of exclusive right to use any intangible property which is a result of an individuals creativity, intellect and efforts of the mind. Thus, under the intellectual property rights in Australia, trademarks are signs, names, design or symbols that identify a product or a service to belong from a particular source. For example, the red M recognises McDonalds and the correct sign recognize the brand Nike. Similarly, I intend to register the name of my restaurant Great Catch as a trademark in Australia (Bently and Sherman 2014). Thus, in the said case, every business in Australia requires to comply with property laws, consumer laws and intellectual property laws in Australia. Non-compliance of these laws can have extreme consequences which can even lead to criminal charges against the top management of the companys directors, etc along with huge penalties. Thus, every business in Australia should comply with statutory laws to be successful and maintain its profits which can be lowered by paying heavy non-compliance penalties (Lyster et al 2012). (2). A married couple named Manny and Bella run a pizza business called perfect Domino Pizza since 2008 in Australia. They intended to buy a heavy duty oven which could cook at least 30 pizzas every hour for 16 continuous hours every day. Thus, Manny and Bella visit the Tuscan Ovens Pty. Ltd where the manager informs them at Tuscan XX commercial oven will fulfill their requirements. Thus, the said oven was purchased for $15,000. While Manny and Bella were waiting for their new oven, they advertised the new oven calling it MB Oven; however they used a separate name for the same and not the registered named which was Tuscan XX. However, the new oven was installed, Manny and Bella realized that it only cooked 12 pizzas per hour and is unreliable. Thus, due to the new oven not satisfaction the requirements of Manny and Bella, they suffered financial loss in pizza business due to inefficiency of the new pizza oven purchased by Tuscan Oven Pty Ltd. Thus, the issue in the said case is whether Tu scan Ovens Pty. Ltd would be liable under the Consumer Protection Laws in Australia for wrongfully selling a pizza oven to customers and the penalties attached to the conduct of Tuscan Ovens Pty. Ltd. In Australia, the consumer protection laws are very strict and in the recent times all the individual and state consumer legislations and laws were combined together to form one single consumer protection statute which protects the interest of all the consumers in Australia uniformly. Thus, on 1 January 2011, the Australian Consumers Laws Act was formed which states all the rights, obligation and responsibilities of customers and service providers all across Australia (Rigsby 2014). Under the Australian Consumer Act, a consumer is defined to mean any individual who purchases a product or a service of $40,000 or less if the same is for domestic use. Additionally, the consumer protection act in Australia states many rights which are guaranteed to the customers and states many restrictions on the manufacturers, sellers and distributors of goods and services in Australia. Section 18 incorporated in Schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 discusses misleading and deceptive con duct of a seller, retailer or a service provider. The said section prohibits a seller from selling goods and services by wrongful representation of the same which would induce a consumer to purchase the same relying on the sellers misrepresentation. It is the obligation of a seller to not conceal material facts about a product which a consumer is intending to buy especially when disclose of the said material fact could prevent the consumer from buying the product (Pigram 2013). In Butcher v Lachlan Elder Realty Pty Ltd (2004) 218 CLR 592, [112] the plaintiff intended to purchase a property for commercial use through a real estate agent who was the defendant in the said case (Howells, Ramsay and Wilhelmsson 2010). The defendant handed the plaintiff with a brochure regarding the details of the property. This brochure however contained wrongful, false and misleading information about the property and the ability of renovation within the said property. However, the brochure also had a disclaimer that the defendant is not totally aware about the facts in the said brochure. Thus, in the said case, the Court decided in favor of defendant only because the brochure had a disclaimer that the defendant is not aware of the accuracy of the information stated in the brochure (Svantesson and Clarke 2010). Additionally, the consumer protection laws in Australia restrict misleading and wrongful advertisement. Section 18 of the Australian Consumer Protection prohibits a seller, retailer or a service provider from advertising which is misleading, false and deceptive in nature. Therefore, in the said case, the conduct of Tuscan Oven Pty Ltd was misleading and deceptive as they stated to many and Bella who were customers that their pizza oven would fulfil their requirement of cooking 30 pizzas every hour for 16 continuous hours every day, however in reality it only cooked 12 pizzas per hour. Thus, the conduct of Tuscan Oven Pty Ltd was misleading and deceptive violating the section 18 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. Thus, as the manger of the Tuscan Oven Pty Ltd represented their product to deliver performance which it failed to deliver in reality, the conduct attracted violating of section 18 of the Australian Consumer Laws (Svantesson and Clarke 2010). However, while waiting for the new oven, Manny and Bella without being aware of the performance of the oven, entirely relying on the representation of the manager of Tuscan Oven Pty Ltd advertised the new pizza oven purchased by them under a wrong registered name, thus Manny and Bella were equally responsible of misleading and deceptive conduct for advertising wrongful information to the customers violating the section 18 of the Australian Consumer Laws (Stewart, Griffith and Bannister 2010). Thus, the manager of Tuscan Oven Pty Ltd along with the company has violated section 18 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and will be liable to bear the penalties for the same. However, the deceptive and misleading representation of the oven by Manny and Bella who used a different name to represent the oven of Tuscan Oven Pty Ltd is equally misleading and deceptive advertisement and can be used as a defense by the Tuscan Oven Pty Ltd to minimize or reduce their penalty amount which the Court will order them to pay (Nottage 2013). Reference List Bently, L. and Sherman, B., 2014.Intellectual property law. Oxford University Press, USA. Elgammal, A., Turetken, O. and Van den Heuvel, W.J., 2012. Using patterns for the analysis and resolution of compliance violations.International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems,21(01), pp.31-54. Governatori, G. and Rotolo, A., 2010, January. A conceptually rich model of business process compliance. InProceedings of the Seventh Asia-Pacific Conference on Conceptual Modelling-Volume 110(pp. 3-12). Australian Computer Society, Inc.. 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