Legal arbitrage in the Competition Appeal Tribunal: consumer claims as competition collective proceedings

This article explores emerging trends within the UK’s collective proceedings regime, specifically the rise of quasi-consumer, quasi-follow-on, and perhaps soon, quasi-consumer-follow-on claims, before the Competition Appeal Tribunal. It investigates the incentives created by procedural advantages exclusive to competition law claims, encouraging claimants to frame consumer-related harms as breaches of competition law. This article analyses the overlaps and divergences between competition and consumer law, especially regarding the scope of the two regimes and their interpretations of fairness. The article also considers how quasi-consumer cases may relate to the concept of competition on the merits and breaches of the Chapter I prohibition of the Competition Act 1998.