Fuel sticker fiasco: High Court finds Mitsubishi innocent, car industry delights

A 4-year battle between a solitary consumer and a giant car company has ended, but not before highlighting just how insane the Australian legal system actually is. Here’s why common sense is so rare in the car industry…

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Way back in 2017 a Victorian named Zelko Begovic bought a 2016 Mitsubishi Triton. The vehicle was Mr Begovic's second Triton at least because it replaced his old 2008 model.

But he got a surprise when one day the newer Triton's official fuel economy was better than the one he had just superseded. Except the real-world fuel economy he claimed he experienced was worse. Outrage ensued, here’s what happened…

This metaphorical itch was so profound that he had it independently tested, he also kept meticulous records, and he took the whole thing to VCAT because he was, supposedly, that irritated by the results, seemingly.

That independent testing found that Mr Begovic’s ute could not duplicate the fuel economy figure on the label. Oh dear.

To be clear here, the fuel economy label at that time has to be there at the point of sale, of course, because this is a legal requirement. Those official fuel economy tests are conducted to a very rigorous laboratory standard.

So when motoring journalists say in their reviews that a certain figure is a carmaker's ‘fuel economy claim’, they are emphatically full of uninformed jargon. It's an official test to an independent standard; it's not a claim.

In other words, it would be hard for Mitsubishi to have done a Volkswagen Dieselgate on that, such as to lie, cheat and otherwise engage in a malicious but also hilariously incompetent global conspiracy.

Not impossible, perhaps, but quite difficult.

In 2019, VCAT ruled Mr Begovic’s way and Mitsubishi received a metaphorical kick in the gonads, which they took so little delight in receiving that they appealed all the way up the steps to the Supreme Court of Australia's apparent ‘education state’, also known as Victoria.

This appeal took two years in total, for lawyers who know far better than us about these lofty issues, obviously, but who also perversely go to work wearing wigs and dresses only to uphold the original VCAT determination and find Mitsubishi guilty of misleading and deceptive conduct: report here >>.

Let us pause momentarily and assess the breathtakingly, blinding, paradoxically absurd stupidity of this situation. This is up there with one of the most fucking ridiculous decisions ever made by a court:

If you're a carmaker you are legally required to do official fuel economy testing to a laboratory standard that you don't have any control over, conducted in a proper laboratory which is very keen indeed to maintain its accreditation, yet to do so and affix the legally required label to the vehicle product is somehow misleading to the consumer.

These laboratories are quite unmotivated to cop a little under-the-table favour if asked to fudge the freaking results, for a start, and there was no evidence whatsoever that there was any conduct of this nature - none at all.

So Mitsubishi did this test at considerable cost to them, and to a standard over which they have no control, and the results come back making the carmaker a spectator as those printed labels are legally mandated stickers slapped inside the windscreen of every new Triton to sell, but it’s considered in breach of consumer transparency.

Mitsubishi fulfilled its consumer-related fuel economy obligations, but Victoria’s Supreme Pizza Court saw otherwise

Mitsubishi, or any other carmaker, does not do this because they want to tell you how much fuel their vehicles drink or how much they belch or fart out the exhaust. Carmakers do this because it is illegal not to. If the sticker is not there, you you are breaking the law quite blatantly.

Despite all this context, the Supreme Court of Victoria declared that this conduct by Mitsubishi was “misleading or deceptive”. For fuck’s sake.

All because one guy was just irritated by his fuel consumption. At this point in 2021 the class action lawyers would’ve been circling like the sharks they are.

Mitsubishi went 100% Pat Benatar and got all fired up indeed. They did a Daryl Kerrigan and took it all the way to the Australian High Court.

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The Clash of titans:

Thankfully, the High Court was not on Mr Begovic’s side. He might appreciate these immortal words from renowned social philosophers, The Clash:

I fought the law and the law won

A very important man in a dress and wig found that, paraphrasing, it was absolutely fucking insane to comply with the fuel economy standard manddated in ADR 81/02 and also by virtue of said compliance be guilty of misleading and deceptive conduct.

An official up-yours was handed to the Supreme Court of Victoria with a complimentary smile, presumably.

Happily for other carmakers, there's no court that gets higher than the High Court of Australia, so that's pretty much the end of this saga as all brands from the entire car industry breathe a collective sigh of relief. Their adulation at this point is because otherwise they'd all be lining up like Lemmings for their turn at the misleading/deceit turnstile that is the Australian legal system.

Presumably, Toyota Australia wants to keep its misleading, deceptive championship belt >>

So what did we learn from this? Well, one key takeaway here is that Australia’s legal system is properly stupid, where one man with, what some would say is an obsession with fuel economy recordkeeping, can kick off a tsunami of staggering economic activity that keeps the country going.

Another effective use of taxpayer funding.

For once, the chief executive of the FCAI (the car industry’s grubby little lobby group), Tony Weber and I are in agreement.

#BREAKING NEWS JUST IN: Hell has officially frozen over.

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