The Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) has rebuked a prominent class action law firm for submitting evidence containing an “offensive personal attack” on its president. The CAT declined to certify a portion of the proposed collective action against Apple and Amazon, permitting the remainder to proceed only if the designated class representative agrees to cap his fees.
The Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) criticized Justin Le Patourel’s proposed charges as excessive, reducing his hourly rate from £200 to £170 and the daily maximum from £1,250 to £750. The Class Representatives Network (CRN) countered that these limits would result in the group paying far less for their advocate and overseer compared to the most junior trainee solicitor or paralegal on their team.
Fee Dispute
Evidence regarding compensation submitted to the CAT included an anonymous CRN member survey conducted by Le Patourel’s legal team, Hausfeld. The CAT expressed regret that several respondents used the survey to voice broader concerns about the tribunal’s management, including one instance of a personal affront to the tribunal’s president, Mrs Justice Bacon, who chaired the panel.
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Hausfeld accepted that the response contained “irrelevant and inappropriate commentary” outside the scope of the survey but said that it wanted to present the full results in unedited form. The CAT said it was entirely improper for the PCR and its legal representatives to have included, in that evidence, anonymous material that was not only (as Hausfeld accepted) irrelevant and inappropriate, but was also personally offensive to the president of the tribunal.
Collective Action
The lawsuit targets Apple and Amazon, alleging unlawful anti-competitive agreements that prevented third-party sellers from reselling Apple and Beats products on Amazon. This allegedly caused consumers to pay higher prices for these items through UK retailers, both online and in physical stores, outside mobile contracts, from 31 October 2018 to 15 December 2025. The class is estimated to include 29 million members.
The PCR estimates the loss suffered by people who bought directly from Amazon, the ‘On-Amazon claim’, as being worth from £289m to £306m with interest, which would mean damages of £37 to £39 per customer. Damages for those who bought products from other retail outlets, the ‘Off-Amazon claim’, could be four times as much.
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Class Representative
The CAT said the class representative was not “and should not become, simply another commercial stakeholder in the proceedings”. This would “create misaligned incentives, by blurring the line between the class representative and the commercial stakeholders such as the funders and lawyers”. The litigation funding agreement provided that, if the claim succeeded, backer Asertis could charge a multiplier of 3.9 on a “draw down” of £339,500 in fees for the PCR, meaning that claimants could lose £1.7m of their damages.
The CAT refused to certify the Off-Amazon claim, on the grounds that it could only place “limited weight” on the expert evidence involved. The evidence should be “treated with caution”, but it “can be relied on” for the On-Amazon claim. The On-Amazon claim could be certified if the PCR agreed to limit his fees to £170 an hour and £750 a day and there was no recovery of costs relating to the original PCR’s proceedings in any funding, insurance or fee arrangements, as had been mooted.
