Khatija Hafesji acted for Article 39.
As the pandemic took hold in the early part of 2020, the Department for Education had fears for implications of widespread sickness on the ability of local authorities to provide care to vulnerable children.
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The comments made in this case note are wholly personal and do not reflect the views of any other members of Monckton Chambers, its tenants or clients.
Sportradar AG and Another v Football DataCo Limited and Others [2020] CAT 25 (judgment available here).
Ronit Kreisberger QC, Alistair Lindsay and Ciar McAndrew are instructed by Sportradar.
Kassie Smith QC and Thomas Sebastian are instructed by Football DataCo.
In a judgment handed down on 2 December 2020, the President (Roth J) of the Competition Appeal Tribunal (‘CAT’) refused an application to transfer proceedings from the CAT to the High Court. This is the first time the CAT has been asked to consider a contested application to transfer a competition law claim out of the CAT.
The Claimants (‘Sportradar’) supply sports data and sports betting services to bookmakers, including live football match data. This data is used by bookmakers to offer ‘in-play’ betting (e.g. bets on who will score the next goal or win the next penalty). Sportradar competes with the Second and Third Defendants (‘Genius’) in this market.
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The comments made in this case note are wholly personal and do not reflect the views of any other members of Monckton Chambers, its tenants or clients.
Paul Harris QC leads on behalf of the claimants in Walter Hugh Merricks CBE v Mastercard Inc.
The UK’s current regime for collective competition law proceedings was introduced on 1 October 2015 by way of amendments to the Competition Act 1998 made by the Consumer Rights Act 2015. The reforms arose out of an April 2012 government consultation and a recognition that it was “rare for consumers and SMEs to obtain redress from those who have breached competition law” (see the extract at §20 of the Supreme Court’s judgment). Given that a key driver of the reforms was a desire to improve access to redress for consumers and small businesses, it may be regarded as a matter of some disappointment that not a single application for a collective proceedings order has yet been granted. Against that background, there can be little doubt that the long-awaited Supreme Court judgment in Merricks will reinvigorate the UK’s collective proceedings regime.
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The comments made in this case note are wholly personal and do not reflect the views of any other members of Monckton Chambers, its tenants or clients.
Paul Harris QC and Michael Armitage, of Monckton Chambers, acted for the 8 Saracens players who faced charges, as well as former England international Richard Wigglesworth.
An Independent Disciplinary Panel appointed by the Rugby Football Union (RFU) has today given judgment in a high-profile case concerning breaches of COVID-19 protocols by 13 professional rugby players which led to the recent cancellation of the Quilter cup match between Barbarian FC and England. The Panel’s lengthy and detailed reasons address a number of matters of principle, and are therefore required reading for all those with a professional interest in sporting disciplinary matters.
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The comments made in this case note are wholly personal and do not reflect the views of any other members of Monckton Chambers, its tenants or clients.
Secretary of State for Health and Others (Respondents) v Servier Laboratories Ltd and others (Appellants) [2020] UKSC 44
Jon Turner QC and Philip Woolfe acted for the Secretery of State for Health and Anor.
Daniel Beard QC, Julian Gregory and Alexandra Littlewood acted for the Scottish Ministers and ors.
Laura Elizabeth John acted for the Welsh Ministers and ors.
In the proceedings below, in the Court of Appeal Robert Palmer QC also acted for the English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland health authorities, and at the first instance Josh Holmes QC acted for the Welsh health authorities.
In this important and unanimous judgment, the Supreme Court provides guidance on the EU law principle of absolute res judicata, namely the circumstances in which a European judicial decision is given dispositive effect which is binding not simply on the parties to the decision but on the world.
Background to the appeal
The appellant, Servier, is a pharmaceutical company which developed and manufactured a medicinal product called Perindopril that is used to treat cardiovascular diseases [2]. The appeal arises out of a long-running set of proceedings presently before the High Court, which concern whether Servier breached articles 101 and 102 TFEU / Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of the Competition Act 1998 [4]. By these claims, the respondents (who are the claimants in the proceedings before the court) claim that Servier’s breaches of competition law delayed the entry of generic Perindopril onto the UK market which in turn caused the price of Perindopril to be higher than it would otherwise have been, and caused them financial loss [6].
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The comments made in this case note are wholly personal and do not reflect the views of any other members of Monckton Chambers, its tenants or clients.
Laura Elizabeth John appeared for the Information Commissioner
“The laws are no longer fit for purpose”, reported the Information Commissioner to Parliament last year – “In the modern age, public services are delivered in many ways by many organisations. Yet not all of these organisations are subject to access to information laws.”
In a judgment that will be of interest to a number of entities, particularly in the transport and utilities sectors, the Upper Tribunal in IC v Poplar Housing Association [2020] UKUT 182 (AAC) has provided a boost to this analysis, upholding a narrow definition of “public authority” under Regulation 2(2)(c) of the Environmental Information Regulations (“EIR”) that will exclude many organisations from the scope of the regime.
The case concerned whether a housing association, Poplar, was a “public authority” within the meaning of Article 2(2)(c) of the EIR. Poplar was a community benefit society set up with the transfer of some of the London Borough of Tower Hamlet’s housing stock. Poplar was registered with the Regulator of Social Housing as a private registered provider of social housing, and owned approximately 13% of the social housing in Tower Hamlets. As a private registered provider, Poplar had certain statutory powers not available to non-registered landlords, designed to allow it to manage tenants without the need to resort to evictions, for example through seeking injunctions against anti-social behaviour or seeking parenting orders or the grant of a family intervention tenancy.
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The comments made in this case note are wholly personal and do not reflect the views of any other members of Monckton Chambers, its tenants or clients.
Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd v Visa Europe; Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd v Mastercard; and Asda, Argos & Morrisons (‘AAM’) v Mastercard
Mark Brealey QC appeared for Sainsbury’s, instructed by Mishcon de Reya and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.
Jon Turner QC, Meredith Pickford QC and Laura Elizabeth John appeared for Asda, Argos and Morrisons, instructed by Stewarts.
Tom Sebastian appeared for the European Commission.
On 17 June 2020, the Supreme Court (Lords Reed, Hodge, Lloyd-Jones, Sales and Hamblen) handed down a landmark judgment on whether certain fees which are paid by merchants to banks under the Visa and Mastercard payment card schemes breach competition law. The judgment finally settles years of litigation in the UK courts, and deep divisions in the rulings which had been given in the lower courts and tribunals. It is also the first judgment of the Supreme Court dealing with the Court of Appeal’s powers of remittal.
Visa and Mastercard operate payment card schemes which enable consumers to pay retailers for their purchases using credit or debit cards. Under these schemes, there are four parties: card issuers; cardholders; merchants; and merchant acquirers (generally, these are the merchants’ banks). The card issuers issue payment cards to cardholders. Cardholders use the cards to purchase items from merchants. The merchants rely upon acquirers (usually banks) to provide them with a service which allows them to accept the card payment [9].
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The comments made in this case note are wholly personal and do not reflect the views of any other members of Monckton Chambers, its tenants or clients.
Will Hooper of Monckton Chambers appeared on behalf of Gregor Fisken Limited.
The widely reported case of Gregor Fisken Limited v Mr Bernard Carl [2020] EWHC 1385 (Comm) involved one of the world’s rarest and most expensive cars, a $44m Ferrari 250 GTO Series 1 coupé, and its lost (and found) original gearbox. After a week-long trial in the High Court, it was held that the defendant seller was acting in breach of contract in failing to deliver the GTO’s original gearbox to the claimant buyer. The Court made an order for specific performance, requiring the seller to secure the delivery of the original gearbox to the buyer.
Factual background
The dispute concerned a contract for the sale of a rare Ferrari 250 GTO Series 1 coupé (“the Agreement”, “the GTO”). The Agreement defined the contracting parties as being, (1) as “seller”, Mr Bernard Carl (“the Defendant”), and, (2) as “buyer”, Gregor Fisken Limited (“the Claimant”) “as agent for an undisclosed principal”. However, the Claimant’s signature did not indicate that the Claimant was signing as agent.
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Peter Mantle acted for Royal Opera House, instructed by Crowe UK LLP
Background
Supplies of theatre and museum tickets fall within the ‘cultural exemption’ under Schedule 9 of the VAT Act 1994. However, the business model of many cultural venues does not rely solely on income from ticket sales. As well as funds from public grants and endowments, many venues also make taxable supplies of food and drink at on-site bars and restaurants, or sell other merchandise too. On the input side, venues will have paid VAT on the costs of staging productions or putting on exhibitions. The present appeal concerned whether the Royal Opera House’s production costs fell to be attributed solely to its exempt sales of tickets and taxable sales of programmes, or alternatively to a wider range of taxable supplies, principally its bar and restaurant offerings.
The opera house (“ROH”) relied on recent European caselaw to argue that in economic terms there was a direct and immediate link between its production costs and catering supplies. ROH succeeded before the First-Tier Tribunal on that basis (see [2019] UKFTT 329 (TC)), but the Upper Tribunal (Morgan J and Judge Timothy Herrington) have now overturned that decision.
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On 5 May 2020, the German Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) held that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) had exceeded its jurisdiction by handing down the 2018 judgment in Case C-493/17 Weiss. As the ECJ judgment was ultra vires, the German Court concluded that it was not binding in Germany. This is the first time that a German court refuses to apply the principle of supremacy of EU law.
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The comments made in this case note are wholly personal and do not reflect the views of any other members of Monckton Chambers, its tenants or clients.
