By Louis Goss
A UK appeals court has blocked Mastercard’s bid to prevent three million dead people from participating in a £10bn class action lawsuit against the credit card company.
The UK’s Court of Appeals refused to exclude three million individuals who died after the class-action lawsuit was first filed against Mastercard in September 2016.
The decision comes after the UK’s Competition Appeals Tribunal granted permission for the claim to progress on an opt-out basis in August 2021.
The lawsuit, which was filed by consumer champion Walter Merricks, could see 46m of Mastercard’s UK customers receive payouts of around £300 each.
Mastercard had sought to argue that only those claimants living in the UK in 2021 should be allowed to partake in the class action lawsuit.
The call to only include those claimants who were domiciled in the UK in August 2021 would by default exclude around three million people who died between 2016 and 2021.
The claimants bringing forward the class action lawsuit against Mastercard had instead sought to argue all eligible individuals domiciled in the UK in 2016 should be included in the claim.
The judge said Mastercard’s call would go against the “overall purpose” of the collective action regime which is aimed at providing “access to justice for individual claimants who would not otherwise be able to obtain legal redress”.
A Mastercard spokesperson said: ““This case isn’t about helping consumers. This flawed claim is being pushed by lawyers and their financial backers trying to make money for themselves and is likely to take years to conclude.”
“We’ll continue to fight it and are confident that, once the facts are presented in court, the case will be thrown out.”
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