The Tribunal's judgment addressing the question of to what extent, if at all, the Tribunal should control communications between the Defendants and represented class members, in response to an application from the Class Representative for an order that Amazon be restrained from doing so at this stage of the proceedings.
The Tribunal determined the governing principle it should apply to be: "the Tribunal can properly exercise its case management powers so as to protect the integrity of the collective proceedings". Applying this principle, the Tribunal held that in the present case, seeking to control the extent of the requests to be made to represented persons, or to restrain communications at the present stage in proceedings, was not appropriate nor proportionate. The Tribunal instead directed the inclusion of various statements on the face of the communications to be sent to represented persons. These statements are set out at paragraph 33 of the judgment.
The Tribunal also determined that:
(i) Amazon should not seek from represented persons disclosure or information unless it has taken reasonable steps to ascertain that equivalent information in not readily available within Amazon;
(ii) Amazon must not in any follow-up correspondence with represented persons from whom it is seeking disclosure, contradict any of the statements set out at paragraph 33 of the judgment;
(iii) Amazon is permitted to conduct any follow-up communications with represented persons on a confidential and privileged basis, and in this event may inform the represented person that the represented person may not discuss the contents of the communication with the class representative or the class representative's lawyers, although the represented person is free to seek advice from its own lawyers; and
(iv) Amazon should put in place arrangements to protect the confidentiality of any commercially sensitive information disclosed by represented persons, potentially by arranging for any material produced to go only to Amazon's solicitors and independent economic expert.
