Business Law Library & Tracker
Selected Business Law Cases
Short explainers for court decisions that change how Australian businesses handle contracts, staff, customers, IP and company duties.
Sources last reviewed 8 June 2026
Main law guides
297
Acts, regulations and codes worth reading first
Topics
22
Plain-English clusters
Published case explainers
496
Selected cases with a business lesson
Tracked updates
110
New, amended & reviewed
Plain-English explainers, not legal advice. Use the linked official source for section-level detail, and get advice for your situation.
Get legal helpPersonnel Contracting
A contractor label will not save a labour-hire or contractor model where the legal rights and obligations point to employment. Businesses should draft for the real...
ZG Operations v Jamsek
Long-running contractor relationships can still be genuine contractor arrangements where the contracts and business structure support independence, but businesses...
ACCC v Employsure
Read this case as a warning about the whole structure of a paid search campaign. The legal risk did not come only from one phrase in isolation. It came from the...
ACCC v Google
Businesses collecting location or behavioural data should make privacy and consumer disclosures match the real product settings. Privacy wording can also be...
WorkPac v Rossato
Employers should use clear casual contracts, but should not treat WorkPac as the whole answer. Casual employment rules changed after the case, so documents,...
ACCC v HealthEngine
Data-sharing and review systems need to be designed honestly. A privacy disclosure problem can also become misleading conduct where users are not clearly told how...
ACCC v Jayco
Warranty wording and customer service scripts must not understate consumer guarantee rights. Even where a business wins much of a case, one wrong statement about...
ACCC v Kogan Australia
Sale pricing must be real. If a business raises prices before a promotion and then advertises a discount, the legal question is whether customers are actually...
ACCC v Trivago
Read this case as a decision about what an ordinary consumer would take from a digital comparison service. If your website or app highlights a result as top,...
Calidad v Seiko Epson
A patent owner may not control every downstream use after first sale. Businesses refurbishing, repairing, importing or reselling patented products need to...
Kraft v Bega
Treat get-up, packaging and product presentation as transaction assets. In this case, the Court's summary of the primary judgment was that the rights to the Peanut...
Mondelez v AMWU
Employers should calculate personal/carer's leave through ordinary hours and payroll rules, not informal notions of a calendar day. Shift patterns and enterprise...
ACCC v Geowash
Franchise sales claims and upfront payments need hard controls. Money collected for site establishment, fit-out or setup should be used consistently with the...
ACCC v Ultra Tune Australia
Read this case as a first instance Federal Court warning on franchise basics. If you run a franchise network, treat disclosure updates, marketing fund reporting,...
ASIC v Kobelt
Kobelt is not permission to run informal credit loosely. Businesses dealing with vulnerable customers should treat credit, consent, account control and repayment...
Mann v Paterson Constructions
Construction contracts should make pricing, stages and variations clear. If a contract is terminated after repudiation, the contract price can still shape or limit...
ACCC v Servcorp
Small-business standard form contracts should not give the supplier one-sided control over renewal, price increases, termination, liability or security deposits....
Probuild v Shade Systems
Security of payment adjudications are designed to be fast and hard to unwind. Principals and contractors need to raise jurisdictional objections promptly and treat...
WorkPac v Skene
Casual labels and casual loadings do not fix a relationship that is stable, predictable and treated like ongoing employment. Employers should use WorkPac v Skene as...
ACCC v JJ Richards
If your business uses standard form contracts with small business customers, ACCC v JJ Richards is a strong reminder to review the whole template, not just one...
ACCC v Valve Corporation
Online businesses selling to Australian customers should assume the Australian Consumer Law applies, and refund or 'no returns' clauses cannot override consumer...
Paciocco v ANZ
Fees and liquidated damages should be tied to legitimate business interests, not just estimated loss. Penalty-clause analysis is broader than a simple damages...
Southern Han v Lewence
Security of payment claims depend on statutory timing. Contractors and principals should check whether a valid reference date or current statutory trigger exists...
Cantarella v Modena
Brand names do not have to be invented words to be registrable, but descriptive or foreign-language words need careful clearance. The question is how ordinary...
Commonwealth Bank v Barker
Employment policies should be drafted and used carefully. Barker rejected a broad implied duty of mutual trust and confidence, but sloppy redeployment or redundancy...
ACCC v TPG Internet
Headline prices must show the real deal. If unavoidable charges are hidden, delayed or visually downplayed, a technically true price can still create a misleading...
Google v ACCC
Advertisers are responsible for the claims in their search ads. Google won this case on platform responsibility, but a business that writes or approves misleading...
ASIC v Healey
Directors need enough financial literacy and attention to company accounts to spot obvious problems. Signing reports or approvals without understanding them is not...