The claim argues that Facebook (Meta) imposed unfair terms, prices and/or trading conditions on UK Facebook users. These include that Facebook unfairly required users to hand over their personal data as a condition of access to the social network and failed to share with its users the profits it made from such data. It seeks compensation for loss and damage that members of the proposed class suffered as a result of this unlawful conduct.
The deadline for anyone wishing to be heard as to whether the case should proceed is 10 October. A certification hearing will be held at the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) between 30 January and 1 February 2023 to decide whether the claim can proceed as a collective action and move to a full trial.
The proposed class is all people domiciled in the UK between 11 February 2016 and 31 December 2019 who used Facebook at least once. The class representative, subject to authorisation, is Dr Lovdahl-Gormsen, senior research fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) and the director of the Competition Law Forum.
Kate Vernon from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan UK, who is representing Dr Lovdahl-Gormsen in the case, said: ‘Earlier this year Facebook/Meta decided not to challenge the tribunal’s jurisdiction over Meta Inc (Facebook’s US parent company) and Meta Ireland (Facebook’s Irish subsidiary), meaning that the case can now progress against all three proposed defendants in earnest.
‘This was an important step for the claim—as it allows the claim to progress more quickly to the first substantive hearing.’
Opt-out class actions are on the rise—consumer finance campaigner Walter Merricks is pursuing a £14bn one against Mastercard, and has already made significant steps forward in the claim, while in May the Court of Appeal rejected BT’s argument that a class action against it for charging excessive landline fees should be ‘opt-in’. Conversely, in April CAT ruled against opt-out in a Forex rigging claim against banks.
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