Emma RadmoreThe Competition Appeal Tribunal has granted the Merricks application for a collective proceedings order in relation to claims for millions of UK consumers against Mastercard following the European Commission’s finding that Mastercard had breached EU rules on multilateral interchange fees. The CAT had previously held that he satisfied the authorisation condition but not the eligibility condition. Following the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court decisions, Mastercard no longer opposed that condition, but the CAT still needed to consider whether the class could include people who died before the claim form was issued, and whether the proceedings could include a claim for compound interest.
The CAT refused the application in respect of deceased persons – saying a claim could be made by personal representatives, but that this was not what had been applied for, and the application to amend was outside time limits anyway. On the compound interest point, it said it was necessary to show how individuals would have funded the additional expense or what they would have done with the additional money – it was not enough to show the individual had borrowings or savings. As a result there was no credible method of estimating the aggregate loss by way of compound interest.
