Amazon suffered a legal setback on Thursday when the Court of Appeal declined to grant the company permission to appeal a decision allowing two collective lawsuits in the United Kingdom to proceed. The lawsuits were certified last year by the Competition Appeal Tribunal on an opt-out basis, meaning individuals in the defined claimant classes will be included unless they explicitly opt out.
One of the claims was brought by Andreas Stephan, a competition law academic, on behalf of in excess of 200,000 third-party sellers. That claim is valued at up to 2.7 billion pounds and accuses Amazon of manipulating the "Buy Box" function on its marketplace to benefit the company, and of showing preference for products that rely on Amazon’s own logistics centres and delivery network.
The second suit was filed by consumer advocate Robert Hammond for millions of Amazon customers. That consumer claim is valued at up to 1.3 billion pounds and raises similar allegations of abuse of a dominant market position.
Amazon had argued that both cases should not have been certified to proceed, contending among other points that the economic methodology intended to prove the claims was flawed. The company has maintained that the allegations lack merit. After the Competition Appeal Tribunal certified both claims on an opt-out basis, Amazon sought permission to take that certification to the Court of Appeal.
On Thursday the Court of Appeal refused to grant permission for that appeal. The refusal leaves the Competition Appeal Tribunal’s certification in place and allows the collective proceedings to move forward unless members of the claimant classes choose to opt out.
Amazon did not immediately provide a comment in response to the ruling. The reporting included a currency reference of $1 = 0.7390 pounds.
Context and process notes
The opt-out certification means affected retailers and consumers are automatically included in the litigation unless they elect otherwise. Amazon’s challenge focused on the early-stage certification decision, including the way the claimants proposed to establish harm using economic analysis. The Court of Appeal’s refusal to permit an appeal preserves the tribunal’s earlier judgment allowing the collective claims to proceed.