Mansfield v The Queen

In Mansfield v The Queen, the appellants appealed to the High Court of Australia against convictions for conspiracy to contravene section 1002G of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) and for substantive insider trading offences. The core of the dispute concerned whether the appellants possessed "inside information" as defined by the Act, given that the information they allegedly held and acted upon was false.

The central legal issue before the Court was whether a person in possession of false information could contravene the insider trading prohibitions under section 1002G of the Corporations Act. Specifically, the Court had to determine if the statutory definition of "information" encompassed statements that were factually incorrect, or if it required a correspondence with factual reality. The appellants argued that a falsity or a lie could not constitute "information" for the purposes of the Act.

The High Court dismissed the appeals, finding that the appellants had failed to establish their central proposition regarding the ordinary usage of the word "information". The Court reasoned that the statutory language did not require information to be factually true to fall within the definition of "inside information" under section 1002G. The Court concluded that the appellants' submissions that a lie or falsehood could not constitute information were not supported by the text of the legislation. Consequently, the appeals were dismissed.