With the floodgates beginning to open, Caroline Harbord & Candice Johnson examine the first collective competition claims under the opt-out regime
- An overview of the opt-out group litigation regime, and a summary of the key practical takeaways arising from each of the recent decisions on collective proceedings orders, from the perspective of claimants, lawyers and litigation funders.
2021 heralded a period of unprecedented excitement in the sphere of collective competition claims.
In August 2021, the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) certified the first ever collective proceedings order (CPO), permitting Walter Merricks to pursue an opt-out group claim against Mastercard for established breaches of competition law. Mr Merricks is now authorised as class representative on behalf of 46.2 million potential claimants in a claim valued at a whopping £13.8bn.
In the weeks that followed, the CAT certified two further CPOs in multi-million-pound claims against both BT and two train operating companies (namely First MTR and Stagecoach). These decisions had been put on hold pending the Merricks judgment, and represent
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