Penalties imposed in Unique case

The Federal Court has ordered Unique International College to pay more than $4m in pecuniary penalties for contravening consumer laws in the process of enrolling six identified consumers in online courses with the offer of a free laptop. The conduct involved included unconscionable conduct (against five consumers), making false or misleading customers (against four consumers) and breaching the unsolicited consumer agreements provisions (against six consumers).

The ACCC sought penalties of $6.7 million; Unique claimed $2.8-$3m would be more appropriate. After considering penalties available and principles for setting penalties Justice Perram determined that the maximum penalties which could be imposed totalled $13,950,000 and imposed total penalties of $4,165,000.

• Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Unique International College Pty Ltd (Imposition of Penalty) [2019] FCA 1773 (31 October 2019)

• ACCC, ‘$4.165 million in penalties ordered against training college Unique’ (Media Release, 31 October 2019)

See also

• Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Unique International College [2017] FCA 727 (‘the Liability Judgment’) (30 June 2019) (Justice Perram)

• Unique International College Pty Ltd v Australian Competition and Consumer Commission [2018] FCAFC 155 (Chief Justice Allsop, Justices Middleton and Mortimer) (appeal allowed in respect of s 21 claim relating to systematic unconscionable conduct)

For media see, for example:

• Pallavi Singhal, ‘Private NSW college fined $4.2 million for unconscionable conduct‘ (SMH, 31 October 2019)

• Frank Chung, ‘Difficult to imagine worse conduct’: Dodgy training college hit with $4 million in penalties’ (news.com.au, 1 November 2019)