The sale of shares in a corporation constitutes a supply of financial services excluded from the Commonwealth ACL by s 131A of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth), with the consequence that claims by natural persons for misleading or deceptive conduct in share sales must be brought under the State ACL Act (or the ASIC Act/Corporations Act). Because the Victorian State ACL Act contains no equivalent of s 137B, contributory negligence is not available as a defence to ACL claims in Victoria in respect of share sales. Where a representor makes repeated, unequivocal false representations supported by documents falsely represented as authoritative, the representee's failure to conduct due diligence will be of negligible causal significance for the purposes of contributory negligence on a common law negligent misstatement claim.
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