Two small franchisees will receive more the $60 000 damages following consent orders provided by Instant Document Retrieval Pty Ltd and its Director, Mr Earl Woolley, to the Federal Court, Brisbane.
The orders settle proceedings instituted by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
The ACCC last year took action against IDR and Mr Woolley alleging misleading and deceptive conduct in relation to the sale of 'Master Distributorships' for the 'Doctrieve' Electronic Document Management software.
The ACCC alleged that IDR had falsely represented the current clientele, the level of training that to be provided, the size of set-up costs involved, and the profitability of the franchises. The ACCC had alleged that IDR had breached the fair trading provisions of the Trade Practices Act 1974 and that Mr Woolley had been knowingly concerned in the alleged conduct.
While not admitting that that they had breached the Act, the settlement with IDR and Mr Woolley provided:
- more than twenty court injunctions preventing both IDR and Mr Woolley from making representations, similar to those alleged by the ACCC, in the future;
- damages to two franchisees, in Brisbane and Townsville, totalling over $60 000; and
- a court enforceable undertaking provided by Mr Woolley requiring him to implement a trade practices compliance program in any company over which he has control in the future.
'This is an excellent result for the two small businesses involved,' ACCC Chairman, Professor Allan Fels, said. 'The ACCC continues to have a strong focus on protecting small businesses from unfair or misleading conduct of larger businesses and obtaining damages in excess of $60 000 in this matter demonstrates this.
'The successful result also shows that the ACCC has a presence across Australia, including regional areas such as Townsville where the matter originated'.