Slaughter and May was instructed by Vodafone Limited and Vodafone Group PLC in certification proceedings before the Competition Appeal Tribunal. The subsequent judgement has significantly curtailed the class action that will be allowed to proceed to trial against various mobile operators.
In doing so, it clarified that stand-alone damages claims arising before the Tribunal’s collective action regime came into effect on 1 October 2015 are time barred and cannot be pursued before the Tribunal.
In a claim originally said to be worth over £3 billion, the class representative had sought to claim damages arising at least as far back as 1 January 2007. However, the Tribunal agreed with the operators that the applicable transitional rules prescribe a two-year limitation period for stand-alone claims arising before 1 October 2015 but commenced in the Tribunal after that date. Accordingly, the class representative’s claims for damages arising before 1 October 2015 were struck out on the basis that they were time barred.
This is the first detailed ruling examining whether standalone claims for damages arising before 1 October 2015 can be pursued before the Tribunal. In finding for the operators, the Tribunal’s ruling confirms the temporal limitations on the claims that class representatives can bring.
A copy of the judgment is available here.