FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA

JANETTE LYN HURLEY

v

McDONALD’S AUSTRALIA LIMITED

Q 194 of 1999

SUMMARY

In accordance with the practice of the Federal Court in certain cases of public interest, a brief summary has been prepared to accompany the reasons for judgment that are to be delivered today.  It must, of course, be emphasized that the only authoritative pronouncement of the Court’s reasons is that contained in the published reasons for judgment.  This summary is intended to assist in understanding the principal conclusions that have been reached by the Court; it is not intended to take the place of the official reasons for judgment.

Dowsett J

9 March 2001

SUMMARY OF REASONS FOR JUDGMENT DELIVERED ON 9 MARCH 2001

1                     In both 1998 and 1999 McDonald’s conducted competitions entitled “McMatch & Win Monopoly”.  Customers were offered the opportunity to win prizes by collecting stamps which were attached to McDonald’s packaging.  During the 1999 competition, McDonald’s rejected many claims for prizes which relied upon stamps printed for the 1998 competition, saying that these stamps had not been collected from any of it’s restaurants during the 1999 competition.  In these proceedings thirty-four people tried to prove that they had so obtained their stamps. 

2                     Companies which manufactured the packaging for McDonald’s also attached the stamps to it.  Sometimes, packaging came without stamps or restaurants ran out of packaging.  In those circumstances restaurant staff could supply customers with stamps from rolls of spare stamps.  McDonald’s proved that it was unlikely that packaging manufacturers had attached 1998 stamps to 1999 packaging.  Therefore customers could have received 1998 stamps from McDonald’s restaurants only if:

·                 restaurants had kept cartons of 1998 packaging and supplied it to customers in 1999; or

·                 restaurants had kept rolls of spare stamps from 1998 and supplied them in 1999.

3                     For reasons associated with the shapes of the stamps, only about half of the claimants could possibly have received their stamps from spare rolls.

4                     The 1998 packaging was distinctly different in colour from the 1999 packaging.  The Court considered that had a carton of it been supplied from a restaurant during the 1999 competition, the restaurant staff would almost certainly have noticed it.  Staff members from all of the relevant restaurants gave evidence that there was no 1998 packaging in the restaurants during the 1999 competition.  Further, most of the claimants said that they had received 1999 packaging, not 1998 packaging.  Staff from the restaurants also said that the spare rolls of stamps from 1998 had been discarded or not seen since the 1998 competition.

5                     The claimants had to persuade the Court that it was more probable than not that they had received their stamps from McDonald’s restaurants during the 1999 competition.  The Court considered the evidence from the claimants and the evidence from McDonald’s, particularly the evidence from the restaurant staff, and was not satisfied of any of the claims.  In some cases this was because of the McDonald’s evidence.  In other cases it was because there were unsatisfactory aspects to the claimants’ evidence.

The full text of this judgment can be found at:  http://www.fedcourt.gov.au