While the tributes flow for billionaire packaging tycoon Richard Pratt, two legal cases against Pratt’s packaging company Visy over its involvement in a cartel are set to be ramped up.
Visy and Pratt were fined $36 million in 2007 over their involvement in the packaging cartel, which was estimated to have cost customers of Visy and fellow cartel member Amcor at least $700 million.
A case bought by food and beverage giant Cadbury Schweppes against Amcor and Visy is set to start next Monday, while a class action filed in April 2006 by law firm Maurice Blackburn against Visy and Amcor is also continuing and is expected to proceed to trial early next year.
Maurice Blackburn principal Rebecca Gilsenan says hundreds of customers – all of whom purchased more than $100,000 worth of corrugated fibreboard packaging between 1 May 2000 and 1 May 2005 – are involved in the class action.
The case has been somewhat delayed by the fact Visy’s legal team has been tied up defending criminal charges brought against Pratt for providing misleading evidence to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission during its cartel investigation. These charges were recently dropped due to Pratt’s ill-health.
But Gilsenan says her team will be watching the Cadbury trial closely.
“While it’s narrower than our case, in that there’s only one customer involved, it’s slightly broader in that it includes products not included in our action, such as cans and plastic bottles.
“We hope that what happens in that case might narrow the issues in dispute in ours.”
The class action remains in the preparatory stage, and Maurice Blackburn lawyers have been kept busy wading through more than 25,000 documents obtained from Visy, Amcor and the ACCC.
Gilsenan says she has two groups of people involved in the class action – a group of a few hundred very active participants, and a much larger group of customers who are prepared to sit back and wait and see what happens.
Pratt will be buried in Melbourne on Thursday.
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James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
