An insurance broker who provides an ambiguous certificate of insurance to a premium funder, while knowing the true nature of the policy and the importance of cancellability to the funder, engages in misleading or deceptive conduct under s 52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth). However, where the funder's own officers acted with gross carelessness — approving loans beyond their authority, failing to read documents, and being motivated primarily by a desire to cover up earlier errors — the funder may fail to establish that the broker's misleading conduct was a cause of its loss. The question of whether a plaintiff's own negligence breaks the causal chain under s 82 remains fact-dependent.
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