On Thursday last week the Supreme Court of Canada handed down three much-anticipated judgments concerning indirect purchaser claims. The trio of cases point towards a distinctive, and in many respects more claimant-friendly, approach to class actions than that adopted in the US. They will therefore be essential reading for those preparing for the proposed new collective action regimes here in Europe.
Of even greater interest (from a European perspective) is the Court’s rejection of the passing-on defence – i.e. the defence that a claimant ‘passed on’ some or all of the unlawful overcharges to its own customers. In the large majority of European countries, including England, the courts have yet to decide whether to recognise such a defence (its existence was assumed but not debated in the Devenish case). Continue reading
