Introduction
Today, on the 1st October 2015, when we are supposed to be celebrating the brave new world of the Competition Act 1998 (“CA”) as amended by the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (“CRA”), cartelists and other competition law infringers up and down the land[1] must be rubbing their hands in glee at the transitional provisions contained in Rule 119 of the Competition Appeal Tribunal Rules 2015 (“the 2015 CAT Rules” or the “New Rules”).[2]
The glee stems from the fact that these transitional provisions are very broad in temporal and material scope and yet very narrow in terms of gateway they provide into the new promised lands of flexible standalone claims,[3] and of collective redress leading to effective enforcement of private damages claims. The problem, in essence is this: these transitional rules set in aspic for an unnecessarily long time the old CAT regime and all its manifest defects, defects which were the express cause for reform in the first place. Continue reading
Competition Bulletin 