Three Separate Class Actions Related Appeals Heading For The Supreme Court

In a sign of the extent to which class actions have become part of the mainstream of English litigation, the Supreme Court has recently given permission to appeal in three cases brought by or on behalf of large groups of claimants in three completely different contexts.

Most recent is the MasterCard litigation, in which the Supreme Court will hear an appeal against the Court of Appeal’s April 2019 decision considered in this post on our Competition Notes blog (Merricks v MasterCard Inc [2019] EWCA Civ 674). That decision overturned the Competition Appeal Tribunal's (CAT) refusal to certify the £14 billion collective action claim against MasterCard and remitted the case back to the CAT for a re-hearing, potentially granting the claim a new lease on life. The appeal is expected to clarify important issues relating to the "opt-out" regime for competition law cases in the CAT, which was introduced from October 2015 but has seen relatively few claims issued.