Phones4U Appeal Dismissed on All Grounds

At a 5 day hearing in the Court of Appeal in May 2025, Phones4U sought to appeal the judgment of Roth J rejecting Phones4U’s allegations of collusion against EE, Vodafone, O2 and their parent companies.  In a detailed and comprehensive judgment handed down today, the Court of Appeal (the Chancellor, Richards and Falk LJJ) has dismissed Phones4U’s appeal on all grounds.

The grounds of appeal were wide ranging and included arguments that:

• the Judge had erred in failing to find collusion between EE and O2 given his findings of fact which included a passive response by an EE executive
• the Judge had erred in finding that the Anic presumption could be rebutted by conduct other than public distancing or a report to the competition authorities
• complaints that the Judge had wrongly found against P4U on the basis of a new explanation for a document which had not been tested at trial
• the judge had wrongly omitted to deal with material evidence as a result of delays in handing down his judgment.  The judgment includes important observations on the risks of “island hopping” where an appellant seeks to reopen selected findings of fact on appeal
• the Judge had erred in applying the legal test for the drawing of adverse inferences from document destruction.

The Judgment can be found here and represents a further success for the MNOs in defending this long running standalone claim.

Meredith Pickford KC and David Gregory acted for EE, instructed by Jeremy Kosky and Sam Ward from Clifford Chance LLP.

Rob Williams KC acted for Vodafone, instructed by John Tillman, Angus Coulter and Alice Wallace-Wright from Hogan Lovells International LLP.