4 April 2023
Our insurance law colleagues have released the third edition of Insurance Pocketbook. The inspiration behind the Insurance Pocketbook was that our insurance team wanted to find a better way of sharing our insight and experience with our clients, and industry stakeholders.
Of particular interest to competition and consumer law is the note on the High Court’s 2022 Pattinson decision and its implications for competition and consumer law penalties. Key takeouts from that case include:
- The amount of a civil penalty is not constrained by proportionality to the contravention. That is,
penalties are not to be determined by grading relevant contraventions on a scale of seriousness. - Imposition of the relevant maximum civil penalty is not reserved for the most serious examples of
offending comprehended by the relevant section of legislation under consideration. The amount of
a civil penalty should be whatever is reasonably necessary (up to the relevant maximum legislative
amount), in the particular circumstances, to deter future contraventions of a like kind. - A civil penalty regime is concerned primarily with deterrence. The purpose is primarily (if not solely) the promotion of the public interest in compliance with the provision of the relevant Act by the deterrence of further contraventions of the Act.
Image credit: Light Trail No.1 by Lin ZIhao
