Merricks (applicant/respondent) v Mastercard Incorporated & ors (respondents/appellants)
Thursday 3 November 2022
By Appellants Notice filed on 27 May 2022, the three Defendants (collectively Mastercard) appeal paragraph 3.3 and 4 of the Collective Proceedings Order dated 18 May 2022 AND paragraph 42 of the judgment of the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) dated 9 March 2022, whereby the CAT inter alia
(i) made a Collective Proceedings Order (CPO) on an opt-out basis pursuant to s47B of the Competition Act 1998 (CA)
(ii) defined the class of person to be included in the CPO at paragraph 3.3
(iii) at paragraph 4 incorporated the domicile date for the class as 6 September 2016 (the date of issue of the application to commence collective proceedings).
Mastercard seek to appeal paragraph 42 of the CAT judgment dated 9 March 2022, insofar as the CAT granted the Class Representative permission to amend the Claim Form to set the domicile date as 6 September 2016 and thereby to amend the class definition in the Claim Form by reference to the domicile date of 6 September 2016.
The collective proceedings are follow-on claims under s47A of the CA for breach of statutory duty in respect of Mastercard’s infringement of Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (then Art 81 EC) as determined by the European Commission’s decision dated 19 December 2007 ( COMP/34.579 Mastercard, COMP/36.518 Euro Commerce, COMP/38.58 Commercial Cards) regarding loss alleged to have been suffered by the class as a result of (i) the setting of interchange fees paid by acquiring banks to issuing banks on both cross border and domestic transactions (ii) these higher interchange fees being passed on to consumers by businesses which accepted Mastercard cards.
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