Case: News Ltd v South Sydney District Rugby League Football Club Ltd [2003] HCA 45 ; (2003) 215 CLR 563
Outcome: discussed
J, Hayne J and Heydon J also emphasised that there is no requirement of "aiming at" or "targeting" anyone, to the extent that it might be seen as carrying notions of animus or intended harm: Rural Press (HC) at [70] citing Gummow J in News Ltd v South Sydney District Rugby League Football Club Ltd [2003] HCA 45 ; (2003) 215 CLR 563 ( "Souths" ) at [76]-[79]. Dealing with the facts before them, Gummow J, Hayne J and Heydon J said the following at [71]: The purpose of the provision in this case was "directed towards" the readers and advertisers in the Mannum area because it was a purpose of maintaining the market power of the Rural Press parties in that area by limiting the supply of services to the readers and advertisers through causing the circulation of the River News to their advantage to cease. The readers and advertisers were objects, "on, or about whom" that purpose operated. The particularity of purpose in Rural Press as found by the trial judge was as follows (set out at 216 CLR at [57]): preventing or restricting or limiting the supply of services to the particular class or classes of persons, being those in the Mannum area (or in that area and extending to a [line] about 40 km north of Mannum) who could otherwise receive the information and news in the River News or who could otherwise advertise in the River News or take advantage of advertising in the River News . Gummow J, Hayne J and Heydon J said the following at [87] and [88] as to the adequacy of this particularity: The purpose found by the trial judge is entirely consistent with the evidence, particularly the internal records of and the conduct of the Rural Press parties. In the circumstances it is sufficient to say that the trial judge adequately defined a class: even though the identity of all of its members at any one time might not be readily ascertainable, s 4D does not require that. Even if s 4D does require that, it would be possible to draw up a list of advertisers who had used the River News , and that would be a sufficient class to render the provision an exclusionary provision. It would also be possible to draw up a list, though perhaps an incomplete list, of readers of the River News . The Commission's contentions cannot be dismissed by reason of issues on which such limited argument was offered. The same is true of the question, which had a faint presence in argument, of whether it is erroneous to define a particular class by the fact of its exclusion from supply or acquisition. In ASX Operations Pty Ltd v Pont Data Australia Pty Ltd [No 1] there is a passage which some have alleged to rest on an error of this kind. In this case no argument was directed in this Court to the question; the Full Federal Court came to no view about it; and News Ltd v South Sydney District Rugby League Football Club Ltd did not overrule the case in that respect and only one member of this Court criticised it. In any event, to define a particular class by reference to its geographical location is not to define it by the fact of its exclusion from supply or acquisition, because it is identified at the time of the arrangement and indeed identifiable before that time. [footnotes omitted]