Ruling on the claimants’ application for permission to serve out of the jurisdiction proceedings brought under section 47A of the Competition Act 1998, made pursuant to the Tribunal’s Practice Direction (2014) relating to the commencement of damages claims.
The claim is a follow-on action based on the decision of the European Commission in MasterCard, issued on 19 December 2007, finding that the legal entities representing the MasterCard organisation infringed what was then Article 81 of the EU Treaty (now Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union). The claim is brought against all three addressees of that decision. The 3rd defendant is a Belgian company domiciled in Belgium; jurisdiction is governed by Regulation (EU) 1215/2012 (the recast Brussels Regulation), and no permission is needed for service out of the jurisdiction on this defendant.
The 1st and 2nd defendants are both domiciled in the USA, and permission of the Tribunal is needed for service out of the jurisdiction on these defendants. These proceedings are likely to be treated as proceedings in England and Wales, therefore the Tribunal applied the same approach as that which applies to civil claims in the High Court. Applying that approach and the governing principles as set out in VTB Capital Plc v Nutritek International Corp, permission is refused for service of the claim as pleaded alleging infringing acts by the defendants after 22 June 2008, but is otherwise granted on the basis that the pleadings are amended in accordance with the ruling.
