MasterCard lost an appeal in a London court against the decision in a class action over 10 billion pounds (over 12 billion dollars) of it allowing the claims of about three million people to proceed who has died since the lawsuit began.

Global payment processor facing a lawsuit filed by the consumer ombudsman Walter Merricks on behalf of around 46 million adults in England, who became the first mass consumer class act approved in the UK in 2021.

This case was certified last year after a journey of almost five years from Competition Court of Appeals (CAT, for its English acronym) from the first instance, which initially refused to give the go-ahead, until British Supreme Court And back.

In March, CAT said that the date for determining whether the plaintiffs were domiciled in England should be by the time the case was filed in 2016, meaning that claims of about three million people who has since died They can be continued by their heirs.

Mastercard’s appeal of the decision was rejected Tuesday by the Court of Appeals, who ruled that CAT reserves the right to reckon that three million people with valid claims in 2016 will be excluded.

Judge Julian Flaux said the overall purpose of British collective process regime — roughly equivalent to a class action in the United States — is to “provide access to justice for individual plaintiffs otherwise unable to obtain legal redress.

​And he added: “Effects of the Mastercard case would thwart, at least to a large extent, the regime’s overall goals.”

A Mastercard spokesperson said: “We will continue to fight (against the lawsuit) and we are confident that, once the facts are presented in court, the case will be dropped“.

srgs