Misleading or deceptive conduct - reasonableness of reliance

I read an interesting case summary which was linked on twitter the other day. It's the matter of Bonhomme v. St. James — N.E.2d —, 2011 WL 901966 (Ill.App. 2 Dist. March 10, 2011) (Bonhomme) in the Appellate Court of Illinois. It was a matter about fraudulent misrepresentation in creating a false identity over the internet. The Judges had some interesting comments about reasonableness of reliance which made me reflect on the Australian authories concerning reasonableness of reliance on misleading or deceptive conduct (now s18 of the Australian Consumer Law, previously s52 Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth)).

ANZ class action progress - ANZ seeks time to calculate fees

The ANZ 'bank fees class action' is an action run by Maurice Blackburn lawyers in the Federal Court of Australia on behalf of 27,000 ANZ bank customers. Maurice Blackburn has prepared a good summary of the litigation here. The litigation is funder by IMF (Australia) Ltd, a litigation funder.

In the class action the group of  customers are suing the ANZ bank for 'exception fees' (e.g. credit card overdrawing fees) which they claim are unlawful because the fee charged for the particular default is not a genuine pre-estimate of ANZ's actual loss on that default. ANZ is being sued for $50million in damages, which presumably is the plaintiffs' estimate of the unlawful fees previously charged. Obviously ANZ has to establish that each fee correlates with the value of the bank's loss on the particular default. So, for instance, if a person is charged $30 for overdrawing a credit card limit of $8,000, the bank needs to demonstrate that it incurred a $30 loss or thereabouts by reason of the customer's action.