Shuaiqi/CLSum huggingface dataset:
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 3 December 2014 CANTARELLA BROS PTY LIMITED v MODENA TRADING PTY LIMITED [2014] HCA 48 Today the High Court, by majority, held that the trade marks "ORO" and "CINQUE STELLE" — registered by the appellant, Cantarella Bros Pty Limited ("Cantarella"), in respect of products including coffee — were inherently adapted to distinguish the goods for which they were registered from the goods of other persons, within the meaning of s 41 of the Trade Marks Act 1995 (Cth). Both Cantarella and the respondent, Modena Trading Pty Limited ("Modena"), advertise, offer for sale and sell coffee products in Australia. Cantarella brought proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia claiming that Modena had infringed its registered trade marks "ORO" and "CINQUE STELLE" (meaning "gold" and "five stars" respectively in Italian). By cross-claim, Modena argued that the registration of the trade marks should be cancelled, on the basis that the trade marks were not inherently adapted to distinguish the goods for which they were registered. At the relevant time, s 41(2) of the Act provided that the Registrar of Trade Marks must reject an application for registration of a trade mark if the trade mark "is not capable of distinguishing the applicant's goods ... in respect of which the trade mark is sought to be registered ... from the goods ... of other persons". Section 41(3) stated that, in deciding whether s 41(2) applies to an application, the Registrar must first take into account the extent to which the trade mark "is inherently adapted to distinguish the designated goods ... from the goods ... of other persons". In the Federal Court, Cantarella succeeded in establishing infringement and Modena failed in its cross-claim. Modena appealed on the cross-claim. The Full Court of the Federal Court allowed the appeal and held that the registration of the trade marks should be cancelled. By special leave, Cantarella appealed to the High Court. The High Court, by majority, allowed the appeal. The Court emphasised that, in determining whether a trade mark consisting of a word or words (English or foreign) is "inherently adapted to distinguish", it is necessary to consider the "ordinary signification" of the word or words to persons in Australia concerned with the goods to which the trade mark is to be applied. The Court found that "ORO" and "CINQUE STELLE" were not shown to convey a meaning or idea sufficiently tangible to anyone in Australia concerned with coffee goods as to be words having a direct reference to the character or quality of the goods. Accordingly, the Court held that the trade marks were inherently adapted to distinguish the goods for which they were registered from the goods of other persons.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 26 June 2013 X7 v AUSTRALIAN CRIME COMMISSION & ANOR [2013] HCA 29 Today a majority of the High Court held that the Australian Crime Commission Act 2002 (Cth) ("the Act") did not authorise an examiner, appointed under the Act, to require a person charged with an indictable Commonwealth offence to answer questions before his or her trial about the subject matter of the offence. On 23 November 2010, the plaintiff was arrested and subsequently charged with three indictable Commonwealth offences in relation to alleged conspiracies to import and traffic in a commercial quantity of a controlled drug, and to deal with money that was the proceeds of crime. Whilst in custody, the plaintiff was served with a summons, issued pursuant to the Act, which required him to answer questions before an examiner for the purposes of a special investigation by the Australian Crime Commission ("the ACC"). At the examination, the plaintiff was asked, and answered, questions about the subject matter of the offences with which he had been charged. Following an adjournment of the examination, the plaintiff refused to answer further questions about that subject matter. The plaintiff was told that he would be charged with the offence of failing to answer a question that he was required, by the examiner, to answer. The plaintiff applied to the High Court for an injunction to prevent the ACC, by its officers and examiners, from examining him in relation to the subject matter of the charged offences. The plaintiff sought a declaration that the examination provisions of the Act were beyond the power of the Commonwealth Parliament to the extent that they permitted the compulsory examination of a person charged with an indictable offence about the subject matter of that offence. He also sought a declaration that any such examination contravened Ch III of the Constitution because it interfered with his right to a fair trial. A majority of the High Court held that the examination provisions of the Act did not permit an examiner of the ACC to require a person charged with, but not yet tried for, an indictable Commonwealth offence to answer questions about the subject matter of the charged offence. The Court held that if the examination provisions of the Act were interpreted to permit compulsory examination in such circumstances, the provisions would effect a fundamental alteration to the accusatorial and adversarial process of criminal justice. Such an alteration could only be effected by express statutory language or by necessary implication. The Court held that examination provisions of the Act did not, expressly or impliedly, effect such an alteration. Having so held, the majority of the Court did not need to consider the plaintiff's constitutional arguments.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 8 February 2005 CHIEF COMMISSIONER OF STATE REVENUE v DICK SMITH ELECTRONICS HOLDINGS PTY LTD The High Court of Australia today held that stamp duty had been correctly assessed in a transaction involving the sale of shares. Dick Smith Electronics agreed in 2001 to buy all the shares in InterTAN Australia Ltd, which operates the Tandy Electronics and RadioShack stores. The shares were held by InterTAN Inc, based in Delaware, and InterTAN Canada Ltd. InterTAN Australia is incorporated in New South Wales. The Commissioner assessed duty at $684,838.20, rather than the $531,330.60 proffered by Dick Smith. The difference was due to the Commissioner’s conclusion that the consideration for the transaction was $114,139,649, not $88,555,552 as Dick Smith contended. The difference of $25,585,097 was a pre-transfer dividend which Dick Smith, under the purchase agreement, was obliged to fund via a loan to InterTAN Australia. The NSW Supreme Court and the majority of the Court of Appeal accepted Dick Smith’s argument that the relevant amount on which duty should be assessed was $88,555,552. The Commissioner appealed to the High Court, which allowed the appeal by a 3-2 majority. The High Court majority held that the Commissioner’s position that the intended result of the transaction was that the North American vendors received $114,139,649 was correct. The vendors had bargained for an obligation on Dick Smith to bring about that result. The requirement that Dick Smith fund InterTAN Australia to discharge the debt created by the declaration of the dividend formed part of the consideration for the transfer of the shares to Dick Smith.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 7 December 2016 DANIEL MATTHEW SIMIC & ORS v NEW SOUTH WALES LAND AND HOUSING CORPORATION & ORS [2016] HCA 47 to construe Today the High Court unanimously allowed an appeal and cross-appeals from a decision of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. The High Court held that it was not possible instruments ("the Undertakings") and underlying finance applications ("the applications") as references to the first respondent, the New South Wales Land and Housing Corporation ("the Corporation"). However, the High Court held that the Undertakings and the applications should be rectified to refer to the Corporation. to a non-existent entity references two In March 2010, the Corporation and the third respondent ("Nebax") executed a contract for the demolition of existing buildings and construction of unit blocks ("the Construction Contract"). The Corporation required Nebax to provide, as security, unconditional undertakings by a financial institution to pay on demand. Mr Simic, a director of Nebax, gave the details required to generate the Undertakings and the applications to an employee of the second respondent ("ANZ"). The appellants ("the guarantors") were guarantors of Nebax's obligations to ANZ. There were errors in the details Mr Simic gave, such that the Undertakings and the applications referred to a non-existent "Department", not the Corporation. The Corporation later sought to make a demand on ANZ for payment under each Undertaking. ANZ refused the demand on the basis that the Corporation was not the entity named in the Undertakings. The Corporation issued proceedings in the Supreme Court of New South Wales seeking payment. The primary judge (Kunc J) held that the Undertakings should be construed as referring to the Corporation. His Honour entered judgment for the Corporation against ANZ and declared that ANZ was entitled to be indemnified by Nebax. The Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal by the guarantors. By grant of special leave, the guarantors appealed to the High Court. ANZ and the Corporation each sought special leave to cross-appeal, seeking rectification of the Undertakings and the applications so that each referred to the Corporation. The High Court held that it was not possible to construe the Undertakings as being in favour of the Corporation because such a construction was inconsistent with both the express terms of the Undertakings and the commercial purpose of such instruments. It therefore allowed the guarantors' appeal. However, the High Court also held that the Undertakings and the applications should be rectified to refer to the Corporation because it was the actual common intention of the parties that the Undertakings should enure to the benefit of the party with which Nebax entered into the Construction Contract – namely, the Corporation. It therefore granted special leave to cross- appeal and allowed each of ANZ's and the Corporation's cross-appeals.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 26 April 2005 COMMISSIONER OF TAXATION v JOANNA STONE Prize money, grants and sponsorship received by a professional athlete constituted income and was subject to taxation, the High Court of Australia held today. Ms Stone, while working as a Queensland police officer, competed in the 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games as well as in other international competitions during her athletic career, winning first place in the World Cup and Goodwill Games in 1998 and several national titles. In 1998-99, on top of her salary of $39,832 as a senior constable, she received prize money of $93,429, grants from the Australian Olympic Committee and Queensland Academy of Sport (QAS) amounting to $27,900, sponsorships worth $12,419, and $2,700 in appearance fees, a total of $136,448. The Commissioner contended that all these sums formed part of her assessable income. Ms Stone objected to her tax assessment and the Commissioner disallowed the objection. Ms Stone appealed to the Federal Court of Australia, where she conceded that sponsorship in cash or kind was assessable income. Justice Graham Hill found that all the receipts except for the QAS grant constituted income assessable as it was the reward for or incidental to her carrying on a business. The Full Court of the Federal Court allowed an appeal in part, holding that neither prize money nor grants were assessable income but appearance fees were. The Commissioner appealed to the High Court, with an undertaking to pay Ms Stone’s costs. She cross-appealed from the ruling that appearance fees were assessable income. The Commissioner argued that because Ms Stone had turned her athletic talent to account for money, the returns were business income and that her contention that she had never sought to profit financially from her sport was irrelevant. Ms Stone argued that she was not conducting a business and her motivation was a desire to excel and to represent her country. The High Court unanimously allowed the appeal and dismissed the cross-appeal and held that all her income from sport was assessable.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA Public Information Officer 29 August 2007 SHU-LING CHANG AND TAI-HSING CHANG v LAIDLEY SHIRE COUNCIL An application to subdivide land for a housing development was rightly refused by the Laidley Council as it did not comply with legislation then in force, the High Court of Australia held today. In 2004 the Changs applied to Laidley Council to subdivide their 16.67-hectare block at Blenheim near Laidley in south-eastern Queensland into 25 lots. The reconfiguration was not permitted under revised planning provisions. Under the Council’s 1996 town plan, the subdivision was permissible. A new planning scheme adopted in March 2003 meant the 25 lots would be too small as new rural subdivisions had to be at least 100 hectares, the reconfiguration could not take place, and the value of the Changs’ interest would be reduced. However, Queensland’s 1997 Integrated Planning Act allowed affected land owners to seek redress from their Council within two years of the adoption of such a planning scheme. Within that period, expiring in March 2005, the Changs could make a “development application (superseded planning scheme)” (DA(SPS)). The Council could then either pay compensation or consent, in whole or in part, to the development sought. The Changs lodged their DA(SPS) in December 2004. However in September 2004 the earlier Act was superseded by the Integrated Planning and Other Legislation Amendment Act (IPOLA), which cut short the two-year period. IPOLA provided for a completely revised regional planning scheme for south-eastern Queensland. The Council did not accept the Changs’ DA(SPS) as the development was contrary to the draft regulatory provisions for the regional plan provided for by IPOLA. The Changs sought to recover compensation for the diminished value of their land. The Planning and Environment Court held that the Changs’ development application was not a “properly made application”. The Court of Appeal refused them leave to appeal. The Changs then appealed to the High Court. They argued their entitlement to make a DA(SPS) had accrued under the 1997 Act, that they had applied for the DA(SPS) within the two-year leeway provided by that Act, and that because the 2004 changes did not expressly or impliedly repeal the compensation provisions of the 1997 Act their entitlement to compensation survived even if the Council could no longer give approval for their proposed development. The Court unanimously dismissed the appeal. It held that the effect of IPOLA was to deprive the Changs of what would otherwise have been an entitlement to compensation if they had made a DA(SPS) within time. Under IPOLA, the Changs’ application was not a properly made application. As the application was made after IPOLA came into effect, their application fell to be determined in accordance with the legislative provisions that were then in force. The Court held that IPOLA did not have retrospective operation and that no right to compensation had accrued to the Changs.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA Manager, Public Information 16 June 2010 DUPAS v THE QUEEN [2010] HCA 20 On 15 April 2010, the High Court pronounced orders dismissing this appeal, in which the appellant sought to challenge a refusal by the Victorian Supreme Court and Court of Appeal to grant a permanent stay of his murder trial. Today the Court published its reasons for making those orders. The appellant was charged with the murder, on 1 November 1997, of Mersina Halvagis at Fawkner Cemetery in Melbourne. He applied to the trial judge for a permanent stay of the trial on the ground that the adverse pre-trial publicity about his two previous murder convictions and the current murder charge made a fair trial impossible. The appellant had been convicted in August 2000 of the murder of Nicole Patterson and again in August 2004 of the murder of Margaret Maher. He had been sentenced to life imprisonment upon both convictions. All three women had been killed by knife attack. The two prior convictions and the murder charge had received extensive media publicity over a number of years in newspapers and books, and on internet sites and television programs. The appellant had been identified in the media from an early stage in police investigations as a suspect in the murder of Ms Halvagis. The trial judge refused the application and concluded that a jury, properly directed, could be trusted to decide whether the appellant's guilt had been established on the basis of the evidence led in court and without regard to information from other sources. The appellant was convicted on 9 August 2007 and thereafter sentenced to life imprisonment. The Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Victoria held that the trial judge had not erred in refusing to grant a permanent stay. A majority of the Court, however, allowed the appeal on other grounds and ordered a re-trial. The appellant was granted special leave to appeal to the High Court on 12 February 2010 on the question of the permanent stay only. The appellant sought orders for the imposition of a permanent stay or a stay until further order. At the conclusion of the hearing on 15 April 2010, the Court pronounced orders dismissing the appeal. In its reasons published today, the Court held that the relevant question in determining whether to grant a stay is whether an apprehended defect in a trial is of such a nature that there is nothing the trial judge could do in the conduct of the trial to relieve against its unfair consequences. The Court held that the apprehended defect in the appellant's trial – the prejudice to the appellant arising out of extensive adverse pre-trial publicity – was capable of being remedied by the trial judge giving thorough and appropriate directions to the jury. The trial judge committed no error of principle in deciding that the appellant's trial, if allowed to proceed, would be fair. Furthermore, in all of the circumstances of this trial, the pre-trial publicity was not such as to give rise to an unacceptable risk that it had deprived the appellant of a fair trial.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 31 August 2005 MOHAMMAD ARIF RUHANI v DIRECTOR OF POLICE (THROUGH THE SECRETARY OF JUSTICE AS DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTOR) [No 2] The High Court of Australia today upheld a decision of the Supreme Court of Nauru which in turn upheld the lawfulness of Mr Ruhani’s detention in Nauru. Mr Ruhani is an Afghan national of apparently Hazara ethnicity. He was among a group of 319 asylum seekers rescued by the Norwegian vessel MV Tampa in the Indian Ocean in August 2001. The group was denied access to Australia to make refugee claims and was transferred to an Australian navy ship and taken to Nauru in December 2001. Mr Ruhani was then aged about 18. Nauru issued a special-purpose visa for entry and stay in Nauru on humanitarian grounds. The visa, renewed every six months, was subject to certain restrictions governing residence and movement within Nauru. Australia’s Immigration Department found that Mr Ruhani was not a person in need of protection under the Refugees Convention, a decision affirmed on review. In the Supreme Court of Nauru, Chief Justice Barry Connell heard an application for an order for Mr Ruhani’s release based on a claim that his detention was unlawful according to the law of Nauru. Chief Justice Connell discharged the order nisi, holding that Nauru’s principal immigration officer (PIO) could issue a special-purpose visa under Nauru’s Immigration Act without an application by or the consent of the visa holder. He held that asylum seekers who entered and were accommodated on Nauru in accordance with the conditions in the special-purpose visa were not unlawfully detained. Chief Justice Connell also rejected a submission that the visa went beyond the power conferred upon the PIO to impose such conditions as the PIO thought fit because they constituted a form of punishment that could only be imposed by a court. In the High Court, Mr Ruhani sought a declaration that the visa was invalid and of no effect and sought an order absolute for habeus corpus directed to the Director of Police to order Mr Ruhani’s release from detention. He also reagitated his submission that the PIO exceeded their power to attach conditions to visas. The High Court held that the attack upon the validity of the conditions was rightly rejected by the Supreme Court because it was for Nauru, as a sovereign state, to annex what conditions it wished to permission given to an alien to enter it. Mr Ruhani objected to the visa being issued as he had neither applied for nor consented to it, and no-one was authorised to apply on his behalf. The High Court noted that Nauru’s Immigration Regulations do not state that no visa may be issued except upon application, but instead provide for a variety of visa classifications to cover many circumstances, including for emergency entrants and entrants without passports. The Court, by a 4-1 majority, dismissed the appeal and held that Mr Ruhani had shown no error in Chief Justice Connell’s decision.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 11 November 2004 TOLL (FGCT) PTY LTD (formerly FINEMORES GCT PTY LTD) v ALPHAPHARM PTY LTD, EBOS GROUP LIMITED AND RICHARD THOMSON PTY LTD In a case relating to a transport contract the High Court of Australia today reaffirmed the principle that a party who has signed a written contract is bound by the terms of the contract, despite the party not taking the trouble to read the document. Alphapharm supplied customers across Australia during the 1999 flu season with the vaccine Fluvirin which it bought from Ebos, a New Zealand company which was South Pacific distributor for the British-made Fluvirin. Ebos had a sub-distribution agreement with Alphapharm in Australia. Richard Thomson, a medical supplies wholesaler and Ebos’s wholly-owned Australian subsidiary, looked after the collection, storage and regulatory approval for Fluvirin sent to Australia. By arrangement with Alphapharm, it undertook to arrange for the vaccine to be stored at Finemores’ warehouse in Greenacre in Sydney and to be transported by Finemores on refrigerated road transport to other destinations. Richard Thomson’s operations manager signed a written application for credit but failed to read the 15 conditions of contract on the back of the application despite a request to do so printed just above where he signed the form. Conditions included that customers and customers’ associates, and not Finemores, bore responsibility for any loss or damage and for taking out insurance. Finemores collected 72,240 doses of Fluvirin from the airport. At the warehouse Alphapharm’s business manager Ronald van der Pliujm prepared the goods for delivery to his customers, including inserting temperature monitors. Consignments of 28,160 each for Queensland Health and New South Wales Health were rejected because they had become too cold and could not be used. In the NSW Supreme Court Alphapharm and Ebos sued Finemores and obtained judgment for $683,061.86 in damages and interest for Finemore’s alleged negligence. Although Alphapharm fell within the contract’s definition of “customer’s associate” it argued it was not bound by the contract. Alphapharm claimed the conditions on the credit application did not form part of the contract, and it denied that Richard Thomson had authority to act as agent on its behalf. Both these arguments succeeded in the Supreme Court and in the Court of Appeal. The High Court unanimously allowed the appeal and rejected both of Alphapharm’s arguments. It was bound by the conditions on the credit application. Richard Thomson was acting as agent for Alphapharm in contracting for Finemores’ services. The Court held that rights and liabilities of parties to a contract are determined objectively, not by the subjective beliefs or understandings of the parties themselves. A signature on a contract carried significance, particularly when it appears below a request to read the document first. There was no question of misrepresentation, duress or mistake vitiating the contract. The contract was binding according to its terms, and the exclusion clauses applied to relieve Finemores of liability.