Google must face a £13.6 billion ($17.4 billion) class action brought on behalf of website publishers which run advertisements over alleged anticompetitive practices, Britain’s antitrust tribunal said Wednesday.
The Competition Appeal Tribunal has granted permission for Ad Tech Collective Action LLP, a special purpose vehicle created to represent the publishers, to bring collective proceedings against Google LLC and its parent company, Alphabet Inc.
Judge Marcus Smith, leading the three-strong panel, rejected Google’s argument that the claimants’ case was not sufficiently pleaded. Judge Smith added that the claimants’ expert witness could have better explained the difference between the “real world” and a counterfactual one in which the market operated indiscriminately.
But he found Ad Tech’s “counterfactual to have been sufficiently pleaded for Google to know the case it has to meet.”
The massive claim was originally two separate opt-out collective actions brought by Charles Arthur and Claudio Pollack, who set up Ad Tech, which were consolidated into one by the CAT in October in a landmark decision.