Complex claims are being brought against Mastercard and Visa in an ongoing decade-long saga involving over 1,800 corporate claimants across the hospitality, arts, financial services, and leisure sectors. With three different strands of cases – Merricks v Mastercard, collective cards, and umbrella proceedings – lawyers involved are finding themselves in court almost weekly. The first of these, the Merricks claim, is the second collective proceedings to have ever been brought in the CAT, starting seven years ago. Judgment on a causation hearing came through in February, examining the veracity of the central facts, which ultimately determined that on the factual basis, the European interchange fees did not drive the UK fees. Cited as a success by Freshfields, a spokesperson for the firm commented, ‘this is a very significant judgment. It finds that over 90% of Mr Merricks’ case fails factually’. If the judgment is left to stand, the value of the claim will be reduced by £9bn from a total of £10bn. Merricks’ lawyers have indicated their intention to push for a trial on a counterfactual scenario, which if successful, would bring this amount back into play.
Commercial claims involving merchants and retailers, including an opt-in claim for large businesses with more than £100m in revenue and an opt-out claim for smaller businesses, will face a certification hearing in the first few days of April. The final proceedings are the high-profile umbrella cases, the first ever of their type in the CAT, pulling together all types of similar claims under the same banner and jointly case managing them. Ricky Versteeg at Freshfields comments that ‘almost everything in this claim is groundbreaking’, expanding that the umbrella proceedings procedure is almost a practice area in itself.
