Amazon hit with ‘biggest ever’ UK class action in £1bn legal case
The ‘biggest ever’ class action will be filed to a London Tribunal on Thursday against Amazon over allegation it has illegally misused data and manipulated its Buy Box.
Law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher has filed the £1bn claim to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) on behalf of the British Independent Retailers Association (BIRA).
The case is on behalf of retailers selling on Amazon’s UK marketplace, which is said to be approximately 35,000.
According to a statement, the claim alleges that between October 2015 and the present date, Amazon used data belonging to UK retailers on its marketplace along with manipulating the Amazon Buy Box in order to benefit its own commercial operation and its overall revenues and profit.
The case states that the retailers, many of whom are small independent UK businesses, were unaware that Amazon “was illegally using their data to benefit its own retail operation”.
It is the largest collective claim to be filed under the Competition Act 1998 on behalf of UK retailers.
The Competition and Market Authority (CMA) launched an investigation back in 2022 into concerns that Amazon was abusing its position as the UK’s leading online retail platform.
It was revealed last year that the competition watchdog secured new commitments from Amazon and Meta around competitive practices on their retail marketplaces to protect consumers.
The legal party will file over 1,150 pages of documents with the Tribunal that set out the claim against Amazon. Willkie Farr is led by partners Boris Bronfentrinker, Elaine Whiteford and Michelle Clark, along with barristers Sarah Ford KC from Brick Court Chambers and Jason Pobjoy from Blackstone Chambers.
This claim is being funded by a litigation funder which is London-listed Litigation Capital Management.
Commenting on the case, BIRA’s Chief Executive Andrew Goodacre said: “The filing of the claim today is the first step towards retailers obtaining compensation for what Amazon has done. I am confident that the CAT will authorise the claim to go forward, and I look forward to the opportunity to present the case on behalf of UK retailers.”
“This is a watershed moment for UK retailers, but especially for small independent retailers in this country,” he added.
An Amazon spokesperson said: “We have not seen this complaint, but based on the reporting so far we are confident that it is baseless and that this will be exposed in the legal process. Over 100,000 small and medium sized businesses in the UK sell on Amazon’s store, more than half of all physical product sales on our UK store are from independent selling partners, and the fact is that we only succeed when the businesses we work with succeed.”