Court ruling paves way for £14bn damages claim against Mastercard

THE UK’s highest court has paved the way for a £14 billion damages claim to go ahead against Mastercard on behalf of millions of UK consumers.

Former financial ombudsman Walter Merricks is trying to bring legal action against the card giant on behalf of an estimated 46.2 million people.

He alleges that Mastercard’s breaches of competition law, found by the European Commission in 2007, have led to UK consumers paying higher prices on purchases from businesses that accepted Mastercard.

Mr Merricks’ proposed class action was thrown out in July 2017 by a specialist tribunal, which ruled the claim was “not suitable to be brought in collective proceedings”.

However, his case was revived by a landmark Court of Appeal ruling in April last year, in which senior judges found that the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) had applied the wrong legal test in deciding whether to give the claim the go-ahead.

Mastercard challenged that ruling at a Supreme Court hearing in May, but its appeal was rejected by a panel of five justices on Friday. Mr Merricks’ lawyers called the ruling “a truly historic victory”.

Andrew Matthews Sherman tank crewman Walter Taylor looks at a Sherman tank onboard the restored World War II landing craft LCT 7074 before it opens to the public this weekend at the D-Day Story in Southsea. The LCT 7074, the last Second World War Landing Craft (Tank) in the UK and one of the last in the world, has been fully restored after it was raised from Liverpool Docks in 2014 by the National Museum of the Royal Navy