By Kian Mellett
If you cancel a contract because the other side has let you down, can you still claim compensation for what you’ve lost? Even if their failure wasn’t catastrophic enough to destroy the entire deal?
Most people would assume the answer is no. After all, you made the choice to walk away. Surely that’s on you?
The UK Supreme Court has now said: think again.
Continue reading “Walking Away From a Deal Doesn’t Mean Walking Away From Your Losses – UK Supreme Court”
Today, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) issued its largest ever fine under its consumer protection rules, ordering Virgin Media to pay £28 million for systematically preventing customers from cancelling their contracts.
The offence? A nearly three-year campaign of deliberate call-dropping, excessive transfers, and pressuring customers to stay, all financially incentivised through a commission scheme that rewarded agents for keeping potential leavers signed up.
This is not the first time Virgin Media has fallen foul of this rule — it was fined for a breach of the same provision in 2018. The relevant period under investigation is also important, It ran from January 2022 right up to 11 September 2024, one day before Ofcom’s new One Touch Switch process launched, removing the need for customers to contact their existing provider before switching.
The scale of the conduct uncovered, and the size of the penalty, send an unmistakable signal as the UK prepares for a new statutory regime governing subscription cancellations.
Continue reading “Don’t hang up on compliance: How Virgin Media’s cancellation tactics turned into a £28 million fine”Product safety law is undergoing a significant overhaul on both sides of the Channel.
In the EU, the General Product Safety Regulation (EU) 2023/988 (“GPSR”) came into force on 13 December 2024, replacing the decades-old General Product Safety Directive 2001/95/EC and applying directly and uniformly across all 27 EU Member States.
In the UK, the Department for Business and Trade has recently published a consultation on an entirely new product safety framework. Whilst the Government is already using powers under the Product Regulation and Metrology Act 2025 to update technical legislation, the consultation makes clear that delivering the “significant step-change that will be felt by businesses and consumers alike” requires a fundamental reconsideration of the core safety framework.
For businesses selling into both markets, divergence means duplicated compliance, increased costs, and the risk that a product which satisfies the regulatory requirements of one jurisdiction may nonetheless be non-compliant in the other. Although the UK consultation acknowledges an intention to “support trade with the EU and globally,” it is equally clear that the new framework will be “our own rules, made in the best interests of UK consumers and businesses”.
Continue reading “Our Own Rules: The UK Product Safety Consultation and the Risk of Regulatory Divergence from the EU”
Today, the Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) ordered the AA, which owns both AA Driving School and BSM Driving School, to refund more than 80,000 learner drivers over £760,000, and pay a fine of £4.2 million, bringing the total bill to nearly £5 million. The offence? A mandatory £3 booking fee that was not included in the headline price shown to customers at the start of their online journey.
This is the first financial penalty the CMA has imposed under new direct enforcement powers granted to it in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (“DMCCA”). It will not be the last.
Continue reading “Driving away drip pricing: How a £3 booking fee turned into a £5 million fine”
A UK government petition demanding changes to consumer law around the sale of video games has passed 100,000 signatures. This milestone triggers consideration for a debate in Parliament and throws the spotlight on a growing international issue.
The petition calls for a change in the law to prevent publishers from disabling or removing access to games after they have been sold, unless consumers are given the right to retain or repair them.
It is part of the wider Stop Killing Games campaign, a grassroots consumer movement gaining traction globally. Alongside the UK petition, a European Citizens’ Initiative has also surpassed the required one million signatures, meaning it will now be formally reviewed by the European Commission (subject to verification) and brought before the European Parliament for a public hearing.
Continue reading “UK petition demanding video games consumer law change hits debate threshold”The UK’s anti-corruption enforcement has, of late, not been as active as it once was. Over the last few weeks, however, the space has charged back into life with two new investigations by the SFO announced, 14 convictions secured, and new corporate guidance for DPAs. The below is a timeline of the activity from the last few weeks:
17 April – The Serious Fraud Office announced it has charged United Insurance Brokers Limited with failure to prevent bribery under the Bribery Act in relation to alleged bribes paid by US intermediaries in Ecuador in return for US$38million in contracts.
24 April – The Serious Fraud Office announced revised Guidance for corporate self-reporting and cooperation as means to achieve a deferred prosecution agreement rather than criminal enforcement. As a headline the Guidance states that a self-reporting company will be invited to enter into a DPA “unless exceptional circumstances apply”.
28 April – The Crown Prosecution Service secured four convictions for bribery in the construction sector, with the bribes valued at £600,000 paid between 2012 and 2018. Three of the convicted were sentenced to three and a half years in jail, and the fourth to two years.
29 April – authorities in Scotland secured four bribery convictions (two bribe payers and two bribe receivers). The bribes were valued at £88,000 and took the form of cash, gifts and hospitality. The value of the contracts obtained, involving numerous National Health Service rusts, was over £5.7m. Sentencing is due to take place in June.
30 April – The Serious Fraud Office announces raids and arrests as part of the investigation into the British company Blu-3 which is accused of paying £3m in bribes in relation to the construction of a data centre in the Netherlands.
1 May – The Crown Prosecution Service obtained six convictions for bribery offences for bribes paid between 2011 and 2015 in the form of money, cars, holidays and other benefits. The recipients started taking the bribes while at E.ON and continued to do so once they had moved to British Gas. The bribes were paid to secure contracts in relation to new build projects. The recipients were sentenced to 3 years and 10 months and 2 and a half years respectively, while the wife of one of the recipients was given a 13 month suspended sentence. The bribe payers were sentenced to four years, 2 years and five months and 12 months respectively.
By Helen Ryan, Trainee Solicitor, Duane Morris LLP
On 15 May 2024, the Supreme Court handed down judgment in RTI Ltd v MUR Shipping BV [2024] UKSC 18.
The appeal centred around the issue of whether a force majeure clause which required the affected party to exercise ‘reasonable endeavors’ to overcome the effects of the relevant event or state of affairs meant that the other contracting party had to accept an offer of non-contractual performance.
A recent case turned on the question of whether a limitation clause limited liability just for damages or also for debt.
The clause read:
“the total liability of either party shall in respect of all acts, omissions, events and occurrences whether arising out of any tortious act, breach of contract or statutory duty or otherwise arising in any particular Contract Year in no circumstances exceed a sum equal [to zero on the facts]”.
Continue reading “Does a limitation clause apply to a claim in debt? A recent English decision”
The English court decision in Alame & Ors v Shell PLC (formerly known as Royal Dutch Shell PLC) & Anor [2024] EWHC 510 (KB), is relevant to the way that the court will approach disclosure in large scale litigation, including class actions and litigation being pursued under a Group Litigation Order.
The case relates to claims for damages arising from pollution in the Niger delta. The claimants had sought wide ranging disclosure arguing that the defendants had all the information on the pollution, while the claimants had very little.
The judge disagreed. He held that the disclosure requests amounted to a classic fishing expedition and that the touchstone for disclosure is that it should be done against the as-pleaded issues in the case. Moreover, an “information imbalance is not a sufficient reason to order disclosure”.
The key paragraphs are worth quoting in full:
23. As the Defendants accept, that does not mean the case is to halt or that there is not substantial disclosure to be made. There is. But it does require me to consider carefully what is relevant and proportionate now, by reference to the case as it currently is, and not as the Claimants would like it to be, or even as it may be in future. An information imbalance is not a sufficient reason to order disclosure, where relevance has not first been established. The observations of Fraser J in ordering specific disclosure of two documents in the Cavallari case are not to be understood as establishing a free-standing right to disclosure where one side has more information than the other. Relevance to pleaded issues must be the touchstone. Two examples from this case serve to demonstrate the difficulty of taking the general approach advocated by Mr Hermer: first, under Nigerian law there is strict liability for pollution arising from equipment failure. For such events, maintenance records will be irrelevant. Next, if, at the PI trial, I come to the same view as Akenhead J did in the Bodo litigation as to the proper meaning and effect of section 11 of the OPA – that there is liability provided negligence is shown – how is disclosure relevant to negligence in respect of third-party interference to be given where the individual events have not been identified?
24. Some of the documents sought may be relevant and (proportionately) disclosable for other reasons, but not on the sole basis that they might have information which might assist the Claimants in identifying which event(s) have caused an individual’s loss. That would be a classic fishing expedition. I repeat that the Claimants have chosen to bring a case based on multiple polluting events of many differing kinds occurring in a wide area over an extended period of time; it is for them to provide the necessary clarity so as to permit disclosure which is properly tethered to the issues. The Defendants are not to be expected to throw open the doors to their archives or to permit a general trawl through their records. The tail must not be allowed to wag the dog.
Seven companies have a claim against their former director for breach of fiduciary duties. Three of those companies have an arbitration agreement.
All seven companies bring a claim in the English court against the former director who applies to have the court proceedings stayed in favour of arbitration.
The three claimants with an arbitration agreement concede that they must sue in arbitration, and the question then becomes whether the court claims by the other claimants should be stayed in favour of the arbitration or not.
Continue reading “English court stays its own proceedings in favour of arbitration”
