You lose, you pay (some) – the CAT’s cost ruling in Walter Hugh Merricks

(by Sebastian Peyer) The burden of costs in civil litigation is considered of great importance to the incentives to recover damages in competition law. In particular, the ‘loser-pays’ rule that dominates European legal systems is thought to create significantly greater risks for prospective collective actions, in contrast to the American rule where each party is normally responsible for paying its own costs.[1]  The UK Competition Appeal Tribunal’s (‘CAT’) recent ruling on cost in Walter Hugh Merricks v MasterCard is therefore significant in thwarting an attempt to deviate from the loser-pays rule that is prevalent in English civil litigation and striking a balance between applicants’ and respondents’ interests. Earlier this year, the CAT rejected an application for an opt-out collective proceedings order (‘CPO’) under section 47B of the Competition Act 1998 (see my comment here). The question that the CAT still had to answer was who would bear the cost of that unsuccessful CPO application and to what extent are the actual costs incurred recoverable. In its decision, the CAT stressed that the loser-pays rule applies to CPO applications, but reiterated that the parties’ expenses must be proportionate in order to be recoverable. This means that parties cannot inflate their expenses to discourage would-be claimants.