TESCO HAS failed in its High Court bid to stop Dunnes Stores advertising comparisons between in-store prices at outlets.
Ms Justice Mary Laffoy told Hugh Mohan SC, counsel for Dunnes, that she did not feel it appropriate to temporarily or permanently restrain Dunnes’s current advertising practices.
Mr Mohan said there would now be an issue of legal costs, which he suggested could be dealt with in late January.
Tesco had sought to stop Dunnes from running allegedly misleading price comparison advertisements in the run-up to the lucrative Christmas shopping spree. Tesco claimed Dunnes promotional advertisements made direct and unexplained comparisons with Tesco’s standard prices and misled customers by failing to compare like with like. Dunnes argued that its advertising campaign, in which it highlighted its lower prices, was incapable of misleading consumers.
It claimed Tesco had engaged in the form of advertising it complained of and other forms of inaccurate or inappropriate advertising and had not gone to court with clean hands.
Judge Laffoy said she was bound by a decision of the Supreme Court in which it was held that the High Court’s jurisdiction was curtailed to making final orders under legislation prohibiting the publication of misleading advertising. She had come to the conclusion that the High Court did not have jurisdiction to grant an interim or interlocutory order.
She said her decision was not necessarily fatal to the relief being sought by Tesco who could reconstitute their proceedings and she would hear submissions in relation to this.
Ms Justice Laffoy said that given the level of conflict of fact in the evidence, it was not possible to reach a conclusion that Dunnes had been in breach of statutory regulations.
The factual dispute was compounded by Dunnes’s assertion of Tesco’s involvement in similar advertising practices.
Judge Laffoy said it would be dangerous on the evidence before the court to make a judgment on whether Dunnes was in breach of regulations.