LONDON (Reuters) – Apple (NASDAQ: ) and Amazon (NASDAQ: ) successfully fought off a mass action in Britain over an alleged agreement between the tech giants to remove resellers of new Apple products from Amazon’s website, a court ruled on Tuesday.
The lawsuit was filed by consumer law academic Christine Riefa on behalf of around 36 million UK consumers who bought Apple or Beats products.
Rief’s lawyers argued that Apple and Amazon reached an agreement in 2018 to bar the vast majority of resellers of Apple and Beats-branded products from Amazon’s marketplace in the United States. Kingdom (TADAWUL:), reducing competition for these products.
Apple and Amazon said the case, estimated to be worth 494 million pounds ($602 million) plus interest, was without merit and asked the Competition Appeal Tribunal to refuse to pursue it.
The tribunal ruled that the case could not proceed because Riefa had not demonstrated “sufficient independence or fortitude” to represent the plaintiff class, in relation to the third-party funding of the litigation.
Rief’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did spokespeople for Apple and Amazon.
The Competition Appeals Tribunal’s refusal to certify the case, an early step in such litigation, is unusual because the bar for certification is relatively low.
