The Court of Appeal has today handed down its Judgment refusing permission to appeal in Le Patourel v BT Group PLC & Anr.
The appeal follows a finding by the Competition Appeal Tribunal on 19 December 2024 that while BT's pricing for standalone landline products was "excessive", it was not sufficiently "unfair" to warrant collective redress. Justin Le Patourel appealed this decision on the grounds that the Tribunal’s evaluation of the evidence and resulting conclusions amounted to an error of law.
In reaching its decision, the Court of Appeal found that the issues raised on appeal primarily concerned factual and evaluative matters and held that the Tribunal had exercised its discretion appropriately. As a result, the Court declined to grant permission to appeal, while acknowledging that the points raised were of significance.
The result of this judgment is that the class of over 3.7 million BT customers will not receive compensation under the claim, as there is no further avenue through which to challenge the Tribunal’s decision.
Justin Le Patourel said: “I feel hugely disappointed for the BT landline customers who persistently paid excessive prices. I wonder if they agree with the courts that this was justified by BT’s brand or service, or if they agree instead with Ofcom’s provisional findings that it was not. "
“Despite this judgment, I continue to believe that the collective action regime has great potential to deter large companies from breaking competition law, and to secure compensation where they do. I plan to take lessons learnt from the BT case forward to other actions on behalf of consumers.”
Gwen Ballin-Reeler, Partner at Mishcon de Reya, said: “We are disappointed by the outcome of this judgment, which means that millions of BT customers will not receive compensation for the excessive prices they paid. It is to be hoped that this result does not represent a step back for the competition collective action regime, which is designed to help redress reach consumers who would not be able to bring claims on their own.”