Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Fire and Ice Melting Glaciers Trigger Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes
Climatologists have been raising alarms about global warming for years, and now geologists are getting into the act, warning that melting glaciers will lead to an increasing number of earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions in unexpected places. People in northern climates who have been looking south and shaking their heads sadly over the plight of people living in the path of Atlantic hurricanes and Pacific tsunamis had better get ready for a few seismic events of their own, according to a growing number of prominent geologists. Less Glacial Pressure, More Earthquakes and Volcanic EruptionsIce is extremely heavyÃâ"weighing about one ton per cubic meterÃâ"and glaciers are massive sheets of ice. When they are intact, glaciers exert enormous pressure on the portion of the EarthÃâs surface they cover. When glaciers begin to meltÃâ"as they are doing now at an increasingly rapid rate due to global warmingÃâ"that pressure is reduced and eventually released. Geologists say releasing that pressure on the EarthÃâs surface will cause all sorts of geologic reactions, such as earthquakes, tsunamis (caused by undersea earthquakes) and volcanic eruptions. What happens is the weight of this thick ice puts a lot of stress on the earth, said Patrick Wu, a geologist at the University of Alberta in Canada, in an interview with the Canadian Press. The weight sort of suppresses the earthquakes, but when you melt the ice the earthquakes get triggered. Global Warming Accelerating Geologic ReboundWu offered the analogy of pressing a thumb against a soccer ball. When the thumb is removed and the pressure released, the ball resumes its original shape. When the ÃâballÃâ is a planet, the rebound happens slowly, but just as surely. Wu said many of the earthquakes that occur in Canada today are related to the ongoing rebound effect that started with the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. But with global warming accelerating climate changes and causing glaciers to melt more quickly, Wu said the inevitable rebound is expected to happen much faster this time around. New Seismic Events Already HappeningWu said melting ice in Antarctica is already triggering earthquakes and underwater landslides. These events arenÃât getting much attention, but they are early warnings of the more serious events that scientists believe are coming. According to Wu, global warming will create Ãâlots of earthquakes.Ãâ Professor Wu is not alone in his assessment. Writing in New Scientist magazine, Bill McGuire, professor of geological hazards at University College in London, said: All over the world evidence is stacking up that changes in global climate can and do affect the frequencies of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and catastrophic sea-floor landslides. Not only has this happened several times throughout Earths history, the evidence suggests it is happening again.
Monday, December 23, 2019
Financial Management And Financial Crisis - 1404 Words
Since the financial crisis is the value of financial institutions or assets in one country or several countries drops rapidly, and it can affect the stability and development of the relevant country or region even the world economic. The causes of this situation should be well studied to prevent the recurrence. This essay is discuss if the financial crisis that was globally experienced following events in 2008 is an example which can prove the financial engineering and corporate governance gone wrong and try to explain the reason. The financial crisis can be also called financial storm. The nearest global financial crisis was started from 2007, evolved by the US Subprime mortgage crisis. The Subprime mortgage crisis is also known asâ⬠¦show more contentâ⬠¦The essential cause of subprime lending problem and the payment crisis is the decline of the housing price which leaded to the solvency of the subprime loans borrowers decline. For this reason, the deep problem behind the Subprime mortgage crisis is the housing market correction in the US. The Federal Reserve used the loose monetary policy to cut interest rate. The strong growth in the global economy and the pursuits of high returns, lead to the preference for risk between the global investors increased. As the easy access to loans, it was contributed to the growth of the housing market. In the environment of house prices rose and low interest rate, the weakly risk awareness of both lenders and borrowers were increasing, which leaded to the rapid growt h of subprime mortgages in the US. By the reason that the US interest rate hiked, the real estate prices began to fall at 2006. (Simkovic, n.d.) The delinquency rate of mortgage increased significantly, the number of people who were unable to pay off the house is increased. Once the mortgage is cleared, it is resulting in credit losses eventually. Different from all the past real estate market fluctuation, this Subprime mortgage crisis caused the re-pricing of entire stock market, especially the derivative products, and this brought great uncertainty to the subprime market. The investors were difficult to assess the value of the product and risk directly. At the same time,
Sunday, December 15, 2019
The Innocent Man Free Essays
string(67) " that he analyzed were not marked as having come from a suspect\)\." THE INNOCENT MAN: MURDER AND INJUSTICE IN A SMALL TOWN, by John Grisham. New York: Doubleday, 2006. 368pp. We will write a custom essay sample on The Innocent Man or any similar topic only for you Order Now Hardcover. $28. 95. ISBN: 9780385517232. Reviewed by Jack E. Call, Department of Criminal Justice, Radford University. Email: jcall [at] RADFORD. EDU. John Grishamââ¬â¢s legal novels are well-known to avid readers of that literary genre. THE INNOCENT MAN is Grishamââ¬â¢s first (and so far only) venture into non-fiction. It tells the story of Ron Williamson, an Oklahoma boy with great promise as a professional baseball player. However, the demons of drink, drugs, and mental illness prevented Williamson from fulfilling that potential. Eventually, Williamsonââ¬â¢s demons also destroyed his marriage, prevented him from holding a decent job, and resulted in his development of a local reputation as an erratic, unpredictable man who could be likable at times but was generally not to be trusted. When a young female acquaintance, Debbie Carter, was found raped and murdered in her garage apartment in his hometown of Ada, Oklahoma, in 1982, it was not surprising that the police eventually considered him a person of interest. For many readers, THE INNOCENT MAN will interest them as a story about a man whose promise as a person is unrealized and who becomes a victim of the criminal justice system. Their interest will lie in Ron Williamson, the person. For others, the interest lies in the story the case tells about the criminal justice system. As such, it can be added to a growing list of stories told about justice gone awry. THE INNOCENT MAN paints a picture of a seriously flawed criminal justice system. While virtually no component of the system portrayed in the book emerges unscathed, it is the police who look particularly bad, with the prosecution running a close second. The police did a reasonably good job of investigating the murder scene (although at trial, Williamsonââ¬â¢s defense attorney pointed out in his cross-examination of one of the primary investigators that they had failed to look for fingerprints in several logical places). Numerous people who knew Debbie Carter or had been at the night club where she was last seen alive in public were interviewed. None of them mentioned anything about Ron Williamson. Glen Gore should have been an obvious suspect. He had been seen with Debbie hours before her death, talking with her at her car in the parking lot of the night club she had attended that evening. At least one witness said that Debbie was seen pushing Gore away, although others reported seeing nothing unusual occur between the two. At least two people indicated that Debbie had told them that [*603] she was afraid of Gore. (Unfortunately, Grisham is a bit unclear as to how much of this information was known to the police. He makes it clear that one person called the police and reported to them that Debbie had a running dispute with Gore about a windshield wiper that she thought Gore had stolen from her car and that she was afraid of Gore. It is unclear how much of the other evidence connecting Gore to Debbie on the night of her murder was uncovered by the police. However, if the police were unaware of much of this evidence, they obviously could have found it, since Grisham was able to find it). The police apparently focused on Williamson as a suspect when, three months after the murder, Robert Deatherage told the police that he had just finished a short stint in the local jail, where he had shared a cell with Williamson. He indicated that Williamson had seemed uneasy every time the subject of the Carter murder had come up in conversation. Grisham does not indicate why the police interviewed Deatherage). The interest of the police in Williamson as a suspect was increased further because he kept weird hours, had engaged in much erratic behavior, lived a short distance from Debbie Carterââ¬â¢s apartment, and had recently been acquitted on two rape charges. When Williamson reported ââ¬Å"dream confessionsâ⬠about Debbieââ¬â¢s murder (ââ¬Å"I dreamed that I . . . â⬠) on two separate occasions to a jailer and to two police interro gators, he became their primary suspect. Although there was little to no evidence suggesting more than one perpetrator, the investigating officers were convinced that there were two murderers. They decided a friend of Williamson, Dennis Fritz, must have been involved. The evidence against him was not strong, but they convinced him to take a polygraph examination. The examiner found his answers evasive. Given the evidence against Fritz, as described by Grisham, it is difficult to see how the police thought they even had probable cause to arrest Fritz, much less proof beyond a reasonable doubt to convict. Nevertheless, he was arrested, tried (before Williamson), and convicted. The case against Fritz consisted of guilt by association with Williamson (although the case against Williamson was not presented to the Fritz jury); testimony from three jailhouse snitches; forensic evidence that Fritz was a non-secretor (a person whose blood type cannot be determined from bodily fluids, which is true for about 20% of the population); and forensic evidence that hair samples found at the murder scene were consistent with Fritzââ¬â¢ hair. As weak as this evidence was, it was further weakened by the fact that the forensic expert who testified that Fritz was a non-secretor was far from certain that the killer (or killers) were non-secretors. In addition, the first lab analyst to examine the hair samples found at the murder scene concluded that those samples were only microscopically consistent with Debbie Carterââ¬â¢s hair and not with any samples taken from other persons (a fact that was never shared with the defense). This result required analysis from another technician, who ultimately concluded that some of the samples were consistent with Fritzââ¬â¢ hair. It took this expert over two years to do his analysis, and he did so with the knowledge that when he was analyzing Fritzââ¬â¢ hair, Fritz was a suspect in the case. (Other hair samples that he analyzed were not marked as having come from a suspect). You read "The Innocent Man" in category "Essay examples" [*604] The prosecutionââ¬â¢s case may have been strengthened when it was able to prove during cross-examination of Dennis Fritz that he had lied to the school system when he indicated on his job application that he had no criminal convictions. In fact, he had once been convicted of growing marijuana. When the police had discovered this fact during its investigation, they called the junior high school where Fritz was working and told them that he was under investigation for murder and had lied about his marijuana-growing conviction. The school system fired him immediately). The prosecution also established that Fritz had lied about the marijuana-growing conviction on an applica tion for a gun permit. Although this testimony may have strengthened the prosecutionââ¬â¢s case a little by showing that Fritz had lied on at least wo occasions, the case in chief from the prosecution was so weak to start with that it is difficult to imagine how the case survived a motion for a directed verdict from the defense, much less provided a sufficient basis for a juryââ¬â¢s conclusion that Fritz was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury sentenced him to life in prison. The prosecution was now ready to try Williamson. Much of its case consisted of the same evidence presented against Dennis Fritz. However, the prosecution had a couple of advantages that it lacked at the Fritz trial. First, it had the ââ¬Å"dream confessionsâ⬠that Williamson had related to the police and a jailer. Second, Williamson was clearly mentally ill and prone to exhibiting behavior in the courtroom that did not make a good impression on the jury. For example, when a jailhouse snitch testified against Williamson, he interrupted her more than once, calling her a liar and threatening her. The prosecution may also have benefited from the fact that when Glen Gore was called to testify, he refused to answer questions. His reasons for doing so were unclear (he was in prison on charges unrelated to the Carter murder, and he may have been concerned about the impression he would have created with his fellow inmates if he had ââ¬Å"snitchedâ⬠on Williamson). Since he had testified at the Williamson preliminary hearing, however, and had been subjected to cross-examination there, the trial judge allowed that testimony to be read to the jury. Such testimony might not be as forceful as in-court testimony, but this was no doubt more than counteracted by the fact that at the preliminary hearing, Williamsonââ¬â¢s defense attorney had not cross-examined Williamson about his criminal record of violent offenses and his own whereabouts on the night of the murder. Consequently, the jury heard none of this information. Although the prosecutionââ¬â¢s case was no doubt a little stronger against Williamson than it had been against Fritz, it was still quite weak. Yet it yielded the same result ââ¬â a unanimous jury vote for conviction after deliberations of only six hours (including a lunch break). And this time the jury recommended a sentence of death. To this point in the case, the criminal justice system had done little to inspire confidence. The police failed to investigate the possibility that the last [*605] person seen with Debbie Carter, a person with a propensity for violence and known to be a person she feared, might have killed her. The police had made misrepresentations to suspects and pressured them and other witnesses, although that pressure may not have risen to the level of coercion. One witness, who lived not far from Dennis Fritz, had heard some noise outside his home very late one night in December (the month of Debbieââ¬â¢s murder). When he looked outside, he saw two men washing themselves off with his garden hose. The police were convinced that this was Fritz and Williamson washing Debbieââ¬â¢s blood off after killing her. However, the witness could not remember what night this was, nor could he say for certain who the two men were, even after being shown pictures of Fritz and Williamson. Not long before Williamsonââ¬â¢s trial, Grisham indicates that one of the primary police investigators visited the witness, trying to suggest details that would strengthen the witnessââ¬â¢ testimony. When the witness declined to make his answers more helpful to the prosecution, Grisham says that the police officer ââ¬Å"brushed his coat away from his hip so [the witness] could see his service revolver . . . and said that [the witness] might get lead poisoning if his memory didnââ¬â¢t improveâ⬠(p. 193). The prosecution did not fare much better. It proceeded with two murder prosecutions on very limited evidence. It made extensive use of testimony from jailhouse snitches whose credibility was, at the very least, questionable. It failed to question why the police did not investigate Glen Goreââ¬â¢s possible involvement in Debbie Carterââ¬â¢s murder. Either the prosecution or the police labeled the hair samples of Fritz and Williamson as samples from suspects. The prosecution placed great reliance on the forensic analysis of the hair samples, even though one of its experts had failed to conclude that the samples that came from Fritz and Williamson were consistent with hair found at the murder scene. It failed to share this latter piece of information with the defense. It also failed to share with he defense a videotaped interrogation of Williamson in which he had steadfastly maintained his innocence. The forensic experts engaged in some questionable activities also. It seems inappropriate for one analyst to re-examine evidence when another competent analyst failed to arrive at the result desired by the prosecution. It is also questionable that hair samples should be analyzed when they are known by the analyst to have come from a suspect. The second hair sample analyst also testified at trial that the samples taken from Fritz and Williamson ââ¬Å"matchedâ⬠some hair found at the murder scene. Virtually all court decisions agree that hair sample analysis is too imperfect a science to permit use of the term ââ¬Å"matchâ⬠(ââ¬Å"consistent withâ⬠is the term that courts allow). The trial judge upheld an objection to the expertââ¬â¢s use of this term, but the jury had heard it and the damage was done. Perhaps the most egregious action taken by a forensic expert in this case involved the examination of a bloody palm print found on the wall in Debbie Carterââ¬â¢s [*606] apartment. The initial forensic analysis concluded that the palm print was not that of Fritz, Williamson, or Debbie Carter. This was a potential problem for the prosecution, because the palm print almost certainly had to have been left either by the victim or one of the killers. Since it was not Debbieââ¬â¢s and did not come from Fritz and Williamson, it could be argued persuasively that the true killer had still not been found. The prosecutionââ¬â¢s solution to this dilemma was to have Debbie Carterââ¬â¢s body exhumed and her palm print examined again. The forensic expert who did the initial analysis did it again and changed his mind, concluding that the bloody print on the wall was indeed Debbie Carterââ¬â¢s. In his 24-year career, this forensic expert had never changed his mind before. The trial judge can also be criticized. When it became apparent during the cross-examination of one of the investigating officers that the videotaped interrogation in which Williamson maintained his innocence had not been shared with the defense (a clear violation of the Supreme Court case, BRADY v. MARYLAND), the judge decided not to rule on the defenseââ¬â¢s motion for a retrial until after the trial. After trial, he ruled that withholding the videotape was not a violation of BRADY. As we have seen, the hair sample analysis was critical to the prosecutionââ¬â¢s case, but the trial judge refused to appoint an expert for the defense to permit it to conduct its own hair sample analysis. Perhaps the most questionable action taken by the trial judge was his failure to require that Williamson be examined for mental competency. While the responsibility to raise this issue lay primarily with the defense attorney, the trial judge had observed so many instances of strange and erratic behavior on the part of Ron Williamson that he almost certainly should have ordered a competency evaluation on his own initiative. One of the things that the literature on wrongful convictions makes abundantly clear is that, once a defendant has been convicted at a trial when there are serious questions regarding actual guilt, the likelihood that the defendant will ever be exonerated by the court system becomes extremely slim. Appellate courts only hear legal issues and do not generally review facts (such as the guilt or innocence of the defendant). Thus, Ron Williamson was clearly facing an uphill battle. However, it was exactly at this point that the system began to perform better. First, Williamson was represented by a series of indigent defense counsel (working as part of the public defender system in Oklahoma) who took their responsibilities very seriously indeed. All of them performed their duties conscientiously (although one might question whether Williamson should have had five different attorneys assigned to his case at various stages, with each new attorney being required to familiarize himself or herself with the case from scratch). In spite of the conscientious efforts of these attorneys, they lost all their motions in the state appellate courts. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals did conclude that errors had been made at Williamsonââ¬â¢s trial, but it [*607] also concluded that they were all harmless errors that had not affected the verdict). This left the case at the stage where federalà habeas corpusà relief could be sought, and Williamson was assigned yet another attorney, Janet Chesley, to handle this proceeding. Habeas corpusà peti tions are notoriously unappealing to federal judges (in no small part because most of them are crafted by prison inmates). However, the petition put together by Chesley was well-written and organized and immediately caught the eye of the US Magistrate assigned to review it by US District Judge Frank Seay. Her petition focused on the performance of the defense attorney (a common tactic because it is a back-handed way of arguing the defendantââ¬â¢s innocence), the failure to evaluate Williamsonââ¬â¢s mental competency, and the reliability of the hair sample analysis. The magistrate asked two law clerks in Judge Seayââ¬â¢s office review the petition as well. All three read the entire trial transcript and agreed that Williamson had not received a fair trial. After lengthy consideration, Williamsonââ¬â¢s execution was stayed, five days before it was to take place. One year after granting the stay of execution, Judge Seay granted Williamsonââ¬â¢sà habeasà petition and ordered a new trial. Several bases for the decision were cited, but the most important were the ineffectiveness of Williamsonââ¬â¢s trial attorney, admission of the hair sample analysis, denial of the defense request for its own hair sample expert, and failure of the trial court to look into Williamsonââ¬â¢s mental competency. The state appealed, and the order for retrial was upheld. At retrial, a competency hearing was conducted, and Williamson was found incompetent to stand trial. The defense knew that Williamson might well become competent with the assistance of medication, so it prepared for a new trial. It persuaded Barry Scheckââ¬â¢s Innocence Project to take on the case because it concluded that much forensic evidence in the case had not been properly analyzed. In early 1999, the semen found on Debbie Carter and at the crime scene was subjected to the latest DNA technology. That analysis excluded both Williamson and Fritz as sources of the semen. The prosecution still resisted a motion to dismiss, however, and insisted that the hair samples be analyzed also. When that DNA analysis also failed to match Williamson and Fritz, the prosecution finally agreed to dismiss the charges against both, and they were released. In an interesting post-script, the DNA analyses suggested that the semen found in Debbie Carterââ¬â¢s vagina was that of Glen Gore, who was in prison for another offense. When he heard from national reporters that they wanted to talk with him, he surmised that he was now a suspect in the Carter murder. Two of Williamsonââ¬â¢s attorneys had questioned Gore, suggesting that they thought he might have killed Debbie Carter). However, prison authorities had not been informed of this, so they did not remove him from an out-of-prison work detail to which he was assigned. The day after hearing from the reporters, Gore simply walked away from his work [*608] site. Six days later he turned himself in. Four years later he was convicted of Debbie Carterââ¬â¢s murder and awarded a death sentence (later reduced to life imprisonment as a result of appellate proceedings). John Grisham is both a storyteller and a lawyer. However, it is the storyteller that dominates this book. That makes the book very readable, but it detracts from the usefulness of the book as a pedagogical tool. The book has no footnotes (or index, for that matter), and Grisham seldom tells us the source of his information. For example, the story about the police officer who told a witness that he ââ¬Å"might get lead poisoning if his memory did not improve,â⬠reflects very badly on the police. However, the reader does not know why Grisham thinks this incident occurred, so it is very difficult for the reader to assess the reliability of the story. (Presumably the witness in question was the source, but Grisham simply does not share that information with the reader). Sometimes Grisham points to damning information that seems to reflect negatively on someone involved in the case, but his description of the information leaves the reader uncertain as to who knew what and when. For example, he is very critical of the police failure to investigate Glen Gore as a suspect. As described earlier, there was a lot of information pointing to Gore, but Grisham never makes it clear how much of that information was actually known to the police or when it was known to them. In addition, Grisham sometimes refers to cases or studies without providing cites to them. For all these reasons, THE INNOCENT MAN would be of questionable utility in a course on the judicial process, criminal procedure, or wrongful convictions. q How to cite The Innocent Man, Essay examples The Innocent Man Free Essays The Innocent Man is non-fiction examining several particularly unjust criminal convictions in the Oklahoma justice system. But as non-fiction, you will not believe how innocent people can be railroaded onto death row on almost no evidence whatsoever, coerced confessions and unscrupulous prosecutors who want someoneââ¬â¢s head on a stick without truly looking for the killer. The main target in the book is Ron Williamson, who has a humble beginning as the son of a door to door salesman, then to a career as a professional baseball player, drafted by the Oakland Aââ¬â¢s. We will write a custom essay sample on The Innocent Man or any similar topic only for you Order Now But like many promising baseball players, he bounced around the minor leagues for years before retiring in his mid-20ââ¬â¢s. . After his short sports career that took him no higher than the minor leagues, Williamson returned home to Oklahoma. He developed a mental illness and a drinking problem and when a young woman in his neighborhood was stabbed to death, poor Ron was the obvious suspect since no one liked him anyway. You might think this all happened in less enlightened times, but it took place in the 1980ââ¬â¢s. Ron and Dennis Fritz spent years in jail as they exhausted their appeals and finally convinced a federal judge that the conviction was an outrage, based on almost no evidence and the fact that Ron was mentally-ill. The judge overturned the conviction on a Habeas Corpus petition by Ronââ¬â¢s lawyers only a few days before his execution. For years, Ron was screaming in his jail cell that he was innocent. The Innocence Project, a New York City organization that works to free the wrongly-convicted, took his case and won his freedom. What happened to Ron Williamson could happen to anyone. The guy he was convicted with was probably sent to jail because he was merely friends with Ron. You could be arrested tomorrow for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A jury of your ââ¬Å"peersâ⬠could convict you on with no evidence simply because the prosecutor told them you committed the crime. We learn that innocent men are sometimes sent to Death Row. We learn that this innocent man barely escaped execution. There may be many people who still believe that all lawmen are honest, government officials never make mistakes, and innocent men are never put to death. But, I think it is easy to say that there are bad apples in every crowd and yes, even bad people in some of the most respectable positions in the world. How to cite The Innocent Man, Papers
Saturday, December 7, 2019
Introduction to Business Law Australian Competition and Consumer Comm
Question: Introduction to Business Law: Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Answer: Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v. TPG Internet Pty. Ltd. 2013 HCA 54 (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v. TPG Internet Pty. Ltd., [2013]) Content of TPGs Advertisement, which ACCC considered defective TPG started campaigning for its bundle of ADSL2 (unlimited) and home phone. These initial advertisements were withdrawn after ACCC warned that such advertisements are against the provisions of the Trade Practices Act. The content of the revised advertisement was the subject matter of this case. The headline of the same was as follows; Unlimited ADSL2 + $29.99. However, below this it was written in small print that the said services were available when the home phone services for $30 rental and ADLS2 services were bundled together. It was alleged by ACCC that the dominant message of the advertisement was misleading as it was likely to lead the consumers to believe that both the services can be availed at the rate of $29.99, but in reality the total cost of the package was $59.99/ month. The ACCC found this content of the TPG advertisement to be misleading. Legal provisions which TPG was alleged to have breached, and content of the advertisement, which led to such breach TPG was alleged to have contravened the provisions of Section 52 and 53C the Trade Practices Act, which is now embodied as Section 18 and 29 of the Australian Consumer Law. Since the advertisements were likely to deceive the public they were considered to have contravened the provisions of these Sections. It was considered to have contravened the provisions of Section 53, as the advertisements did not specify a single price for the total package. Section 52 lays down that a corporation ought not engage into such practices which are likely to deceive or mislead the public. Section 53C of the Act lays down that under certain circumstances, corporations are bound to state single price. They are under the obligation to state the price for the goods or services offered in a single figure. The TPG advertisement was likely to mislead the public, as they did not properly disclose that they are required to purchase ADSL2+ services along with home phone rental of $30 every month. They also did not disclose that the consumers are under the obligation to pay the fees for setting up the service. Moreover the advertisements breached the provisions of Section 53C as a single price for the services were not stated (Australian Consumer Law: A Guide to Provisions, 2010). Findings of the Primary Judge In this section of the report, we shall discuss the findings of the Primary Judge under the following heads; Bundling He was of the view that the target audience of ADSL2+ services was first time users as well. It was found that a consumer of ordinary prudence after reading the advertisement would consider that the entire service can be obtained at the price of $29.99/ month without any additional charges or obligation to avail another service. The judge concluded that the bundling condition was not clear and prominent and was likely to mislead the public. Set up fee The judge observed that broadband services always require set up fees and the targeted consumers are likely to be aware of the same. However, since the headline indicated to the fact that no such fees is required, the same should have been clearly stated. He observed that none of the advertisements made clear indications regarding the set up fees. Single Price It was also observed by the primary Judge that the advertisement did not disclose the single price for the services in a clear and unambiguous manner. This led to contravention of the provisions of Section 53C(1)(c) of the Act (Kalbfleisch, 2011). Difference of Approach between the decision of the Full Court and that of the Primary Judge The Full Court was convinced that the advertisements were not misleading. However it was of the opinion that Section 53C(1) was not applicable in the given scenario. The primary difference of opinion was concerning the fact that the dominant message of the advertisement was crucial in determining whether the advertisement was misleading. In this context the Full Court cited the case of Parkdale Custom Built Furniture Pty. Ltd. v. Puxu Pty. Ltd. The principle, which evolved from this case, was as follows; when a particular conduct consists of words, it shall not be right to take into consideration a few words and ignore the rest, while arriving at the meaning of the set of words. It was of the opinion that the entire message must be taken into consideration and not just the dominant message. The Full Court also stated that the target consumers may be presumed to have knowledge about the fact that broadband services are sold either as stand alone or as bundled. Based on the above considerations it was concluded by the Full Court that the said advertisements were not misleading. Grounds, which led the High Court to conclude that the Full Courts decision was erroneous The High Court held that the Full Court was wrong is holding the determination of the primary judge that the dominant message was predominant in determining the misleading character of the advertisement was erroneous. The advertisement only chose certain words as being dominant and ignored the rest. It was likely that majority of the consumers would only take into consideration the dominant message and ignore the rest. The advertisement did not intend to bring to the notice of the consumers less attractive provisions of the advertisement. Under the given circumstances, it was considered by the High Court that the decision of the Full Court was erroneous. Reasons for which the High Court considered the Puxu case to the inapplicable to TPG facts The facts of the Puxu case were starkly different from those of the TPG case. This was the primary reason for inapplicability of the case. The purpose of TPGs advertisement was to draw the attention of the audience towards the alluring parts and not to the balance of the offer. Most people tend to observe the general thrust of advertisement and thus it would lead to deception. The case of Puxu was regarded to be inapplicable to the facts of the case in hand. In contrast to the facts of the Puxu case, in this case, the consumers did not have the privilege of visiting a showroom and then deciding which product to purchase. Here the intention of the advertisement was to draw the attention of the audience. Under the given circumstances, the audiences were not likely to pay attention to the details. The Full Court also failed to recognize the fact that the nature of the advertisement to mislead was required to be determined not by inquiring as to whether the advertisement was likely to make the public enter into contract with TPG but by the fact as to whether the advertisement would bring the public into negotiation with TPG and not any of its competitors based on the wrongful belief entrusted by the dominant message of the advertisement. The said conduct is prohibited under the provisions of Section 52 of the Act. Based on these facts the court considered that the facts of the Puxu case were not applicable to the facts of the TPG case. Implications f the Judgment The judgment of the High Court had far reaching implications for the advertisement industry. If I was employed in the marketing section of a fitness service provider or marketing section of a fitness centre or internet service provider which is about to launch a plan for the consumers consisting of several parts, my advice would be as follows; In case the company wants to use dominant messages for advertising their product or services, then my advice would be to carefully assess the terms of the same and make efforts to being to the knowledge of the prospective consumers the other relevant sections of the offer. Such practice would prevent the advertisement from being deceptive or misleading. In a nutshell even if dominant messages are used they should not be misleading. Knowledge of ordinary con summers of reasonable prudence must be taken into consideration. Assumed knowledge should not be the basis of advertisements. The advertisement should not be such that it is likely to draw the attention of the consumers to the concerned service or product due to some false belief imbibed by any false or misleading element in the concerned advertisement. All versions of an advertisement must convey the same impression and not different impressions. I would make it a point to make them understand that false and misleading advertisements may lead to penalty under the provisions of not only under the present Competition and Consumer Act but also under other statutes as well Reference List Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v. TPG Internet Pty. Ltd.[2013]HCA p.54. Australian Consumer Law: A Guide to Provisions. (2010). 1st ed. Sydney: Australian Government. Kalbfleisch, P. (2011). Aiming for Alliance: Competition Law and Consumer Welfare.Journal of European Competition Law Practice, 2(2), pp.108-116.
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