The Competition Appeal Tribunal certification judgment in JLP A&A Class Representative Ltd v Apple & Amazon [2026] CAT 75 contains a number of important points for those involved in the UK's collective actions regime and repays careful reading.
In a re-run of the application previously brought by Christine Riefa, and now brought by Justin Le Patourel, the Tribunal has exercised its gatekeeping role robustly — certifying the claim which it found to be plausible and based on a credible methodology and data, while refusing certification of a the far bigger but more speculative one, stripping out inappropriate cost recovery, and anchoring PCR remuneration to the public-interest nature of the role.
Key points from the judgment are:
- The Microsoft Test Has Teeth but Strike-out Remains Elusive: The so-called "Off-Amazon" claim — alleging that anticompetitive agreements on the Amazon Marketplace caused price rises across all retail channels — failed certification. Without a coherent preliminary market definition, a consistent theory of harm, or any empirical foundation for the proposed methodology, the claim fell well short of providing a "sufficiently well considered and feasible" blueprint to trial. The Tribunal declined to strike it out entirely, but refused to certify it.
- Expert Independence Remains Firmly Under the Microscope: The Tribunal found that where an expert has instigated the very claim in which they then give evidence (in contrast with an expert who is approached by a solicitor who is contemplating bringing a collective action, they have a reputational interest in the success of the case that demands heightened scrutiny. A combination of having instigated the claim and then submitted evidence which was criticised as "defensive and adversarial" — crossing into advocacy — resulted in the Tribunal placing only limited weight on the evidence in support of the Off-Amazon claim. A timely reminder that CAT PD 3-2025's requirements on prior involvement are not merely procedural box-ticking.
- Class Representative Remuneration Gets a Cap: Building on Waterside, the Tribunal set a clear ceiling: no more than £170 per hour, capped at £750 per day for Mr Le Patourel going forward, with annual inflation uplifts permitted. The Tribunal was candid about its reasoning: class representatives must not become "simply another commercial stakeholder" — the role carries a public service element that should be reflected in remuneration. Transparency is also now expected: class representatives' hourly rates and daily caps should be published on claims websites as standard practice.
- Direct Credit Distribution Approved: For the certified "On-Amazon" claim (estimated damages of £289-306 million), the Tribunal accepted that Apple's and Amazon's own customer data could support a largely automatic direct credit distribution mechanism — a potentially transformative development for take-up rates in consumer collective actions.
- No Recycling of Failed Proceedings' Costs: In a firm message to funders, insurers and legal teams, the Tribunal held it would be "manifestly unreasonable and inappropriate" to allow costs from the earlier, failed Riefa certification application to be recovered from the damages pot in these fresh proceedings. The risk of non-recovery and adverse costs risk were risk for the commercial stakeholders (funder, insurers and lawyers) to bear , as they had contracted to do.
