Technology giants successfully defend against class action lawsuit in the UK

Apple and Amazon have overcome a significant legal hurdle in the United Kingdom: The Competition Appeal Tribunal has dismissed a class action lawsuit accusing them of jointly controlling the sale of Apple products on Amazon’s platform. The lawsuit, initiated by consumer rights scholar Christine Riefa, aimed to represent approximately 36 million British buyers of Apple or Beats products. Riefa's lawyers argued that Apple and Amazon had reached an agreement as early as 2018 to exclude the majority of resellers of Apple and Beats products from the Amazon platform in the United Kingdom. This practice supposedly significantly restricted competition for these products. With a value in dispute of 494 million pounds, equivalent to about 602 million dollars, Apple and Amazon dismissed the allegations as unfounded. They petitioned the tribunal not to admit the lawsuit. The court decided that the lawsuit could not proceed because Riefa had not demonstrated the necessary "independence or resilience" to adequately represent the class of plaintiffs, particularly concerning the third-party financing of the lawsuit. Neither Riefa's lawyers nor representatives from Apple and Amazon immediately responded to requests for comments. The tribunal's decision to deny this preliminary certification of the lawsuit is noteworthy, as the threshold for such certification is typically set relatively low.