GroupM and media auditor legal dispute over ‘misuse’ of confidential documents concludes
Media agency holding group GroupM and media auditing company FirmDecisions have concluded their dispute after GroupM accused the media auditor of misusing confidential documents it was accidentally sent by, among others, Mediacom Australia.
GroupM launched legal action against FirmDecisions in May last year with Mediacom Australia one of a number of GroupM agencies listed in the action filed in the UK’s High Court.
The WPP company accused FirmDecisions of breaching non-disclosure agreements after it was accidentally sent reports by agency staff.
A joint statement from GroupM and FirmDecisions said: “Following the commencement of High Court proceedings in May 2016 by Group M and its agencies, the dispute between FirmDecisions and Group M has now been concluded. No further comment will be made by either party.”
Court documents obtained by Mumbrella in June last year quoted a “senior FirmDecisions employee”, back in 2014, saying the media auditor should keep a Mediacom Australia document sent by GroupM’s finance division FinancePlus “up our sleeve” to use at a later date. The company was subsequently forced to make a formal apology to Mediacom Australia.
In its defence filing FirmDecisions claimed that in July 2014 a Mediacom employee “mistakenly” sent “a spreadsheet listing monthly billings to each of Mediacom’s clients with a reconciliation against ‘AVD’”, when sending a report about its client FinancePlus.
It said it understood AVD to mean an “annual volume discount”, which appears to be another term for a “value bank”, a controversial practice generally understood to be heavily discounted or free ad space given to media agencies by media owners in return for increased share of advertiser spend.
FirmDecisions is a division of Ebiquity, which specialises in forensic auditing.
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