<p>The Victorian Supreme Court expected to rule on Monday (October 3) – or even as early as late today (Friday, September 30) – on whether Patrick can now invoke the formal dispute procedure in its wrangle with partner Toll over Pacific National.</p> <p>Patrick says that contracts signed in 2003 between Pacific National and Toll’s Queensland forwarding arm are overly-favourable to Toll, and the company wants to trigger the dispute procedure. </p> <p>This could see Pacific National broken up amongst the two shareholders if the dispute cannot be resolved. </p> <p>The Supreme Court case only relates to the timing of the dispute procedure, rather than whether it can proceed at all. </p> <p>Whatever process is used to start the dispute procedure, it is likely to be underway before the point where analysts believe that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission can make a full decision on the Toll bid, which would probably be in December at the earliest. </p> <p>The ACCC is already taking submissions from industry and will produce an issues paper in November. </p> <br />
