“The chief executive of the new Legal Aid Agency (LAA) has promised practitioners that they will experience ‘minimal’ impact from the change in machinery.”
Law Society’s Gazette, 3rd April 2013
Source: www.lawgazette.co.uk
“The Competition Appeal Tribunal today delivered that rarest of beasts: a judgment awarding damages in a follow-on claim. After its decade-long fight, Albion Water has been awarded around £2 million for Dŵr Cymru’s abuse of dominant position in relation to the price it was prepared to charge Albion for the use of its water pipes.”
Competition Bulletin from Blackstone Chambers, 28th March 2013
Source: www.competitionbulletin.com
ITV Broadcasting Ltd and others v TVCatchup Ltd (Case C-607/11); [2013] WLR (D) 92
“The concept of ‘communication to the public’, within the meaning of article 3(1) of Parliament and Council Directive 2001/29/EC covered a re-transmission of the works included in a terrestrial television broadcast where the re-transmission was made by an organisation other than the original broadcaster, by means of an Internet stream made available to subscribers of that other organisation who could receive that re-transmission by logging on to its server, even though those subscribers were within the area of reception of that terrestrial television broadcast and could lawfully receive the broadcast on a television receiver. It was irrelevant that a re-transmission was funded by advertising and was therefore of a profit-making nature and was by an organisation which was acting in direct competition with the original broadcaster.”
WLR Daily, 7th March 2013
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
“In his recent blog ‘Down the rabbit hole,’ Tom Richards described the ‘quasi judicial review within an appeal’ contained in s.193(7) Communications Act 2003 as something of a Wonderland.”
Competition Bulletin from Blackstone Chambers, 11th March 2013
Source: www.competitionbulletin.com
“The Bar Council, which represents barristers in England and Wales, has today responded to the Ministry of Justice’s announcement that its consultation and implementation of a new scheme for criminal legal aid will be brought forward, with price competition put forward as one key proposal.”
The Bar Council, 5th March 2013
Source: www.barcouncil.org.uk
“The Government recently confirmed its intention to introduce ‘collective actions’ in the UK for competition law. Not only should this enable large numbers of consumers and small businesses to obtain redress against anti-competitive behaviour, but an important by-product is that leftover damages could benefit access to justice more generally.”
Legal Voice, 1st March 2013
Source: www.legalvoice.org.uk
“Britain’s four biggest accountancy firms have been heavily criticised by the Competition Commission.”
BBC News, 22nd February 2013
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
“Probation officers are warning that the public will be at greater risk if the government presses ahead with plans to privatise the supervision of offenders.”
The Guardian, 17th February 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“Stand alone, follow on and hybrid damages claims arising out of multijurisdictional cartels are generating some of the most novel and interesting current problems in conflicts of laws, both in relation to issues of jurisdiction and applicable law. On the jurisdictional side conventional wisdom has it that there are three main routes by which Claimants can seize English jurisdiction.”
Competition Bulletin from Blackstone Chambers, 14th February 2013
Source: www.competitionbulletin.com
“When assessing whether an agreement between several undertakings had the object of restricting competition within the meaning of article 101FEU of the FEU treaty, the fact that an institution, adversely affected by the agreement, had allegedly been operating illegally on the relevant market was of no relevance to that assessment.”
WLR Daily, 7th February 2013
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
“This lecture focuses on the question of whether justice in relation to markets is entirely to be seen as being procedural – that justice is a matter of securing the conditions of non-coercive economic exchange between free individuals. Or is justice also about social justice- that is to say about the proper distribution of resources and a concern about the outcomes of markets? If justice is about social as well as procedural justice how can we arrive at criteria for distributive justice if all moral values are seen as subjective? Should we not rather see market outcomes, in the words of the economist Fred Hirsch as being ‘in principle unprincipled’?”
Lecture by Professor the Lord Plant of Highfield
Gresham College, 29th January 2013
Source: www.gresham.ac.uk
“The big news from last week’s UK announcement on reforming private competition enforcement is that the government plans to introduce opt-out class actions for competition claims.”
Competition Bulletin from Blackstone Chambers, 4th February 2013
Source: www.competitionbulletin.com
“More competition is needed among providers of current accounts, the Office of Fair Trading said on Friday after finding the major banks had increased their dominance in the £9bn market. The OFT said ‘significant further’ changes were required as it warned that the market was not ‘working well for consumers or the wider economy’but decided against a full referral to the Competition Commission. It will conduct another review in 2015.”
The Guardian, 25th January 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
European Commission v Tomkins plc (Case C-286/11P); [2013] WLR (D) 17
“Where the liability of a parent company was derived exclusively from that of its subsidiary and where the parent and its subsidiary had brought parallel applications having the ‘same object’, the Court was entitled, without infringing the ne ultra petita principle—that European Union courts could not rule on aspects concerning addressees other than those covered by the applicant’s application—to take account of the outcome of the action brought by the subsidiary and to annul the action brought by the parent on that basis, despite the fact that the scope of the applications and arguments presented in each application were different.”
WLR Daily, 22nd January 2013
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
“On 25 October 2012 the Office of Fair Trading announced that it had written to the head teachers of almost 30,000 State schools to draw attention to the high price of school uniforms. The high price is caused in part by 74% of schools requiring parents to purchase uniforms from a single, named retailer or from the school itself. This has created a captive market for chosen suppliers, allowing them to charge an additional £52 million per year (see para 2.3 of the OFT’s 2006 school uniforms review).”
Competition Bulletin from Blackstone Chambers, 20th January 2013
Source: www.competitionbulletin.com
“An investigation into whether millions of members of workplace pensions are getting good value for money has been launched by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).”
The Guardian, 17th January 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“The duty of ‘sincere cooperation’ set out in Article 4(3) TEU requires Member States to take appropriate measures to ‘ensure fulfillment of the obligations arising out of the Treaties or resulting from the acts of the institutions of the Union’ as well as to ‘refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union’s objectives’. When and in what way are Member State authorities required to act – or desist from acting – in order to comply with this duty?”
Competition Bulletin from Blackstone Chambers, 16th January 2013
Source: www.competitionbulletin.com
WH Newson Holding Ltd and others v IMI plc and others: [2012] EWHC 3680 (Ch); [2013] WLR (D) 5
“There was nothing to suggest that section 47A of the Competition Act 1998 was limited to the particular cause of action of a claim for breach of statutory duty. A claim brought under section 47A had to be in respect of the loss or damage suffered as a result of the infringement of competition law. The section would not generally permit claims to be brought in the Competition Appeal Tribunal for conduct that was distinct from the infringement, even when the infringement was an element that had to be established to complete the cause of action. The determining criterion was the factual nature of the claim, not the cause of action with which it was clothed.”
WLR Daily, 19th December 2012
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
“As today is the first day of the new court term, I thought it would be a good moment for a round-up of last term’s competition cases.”
Competition Bulletin from Blackstone Chambers, 11th January 2013
Source: www.competitionbulletin.com
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