The High Court (Administrative Court) has dismissed a judicial review claim brought by Innsworth, the litigation funder behind Walter Merricks CBE’s collective proceedings claim against Mastercard, which sought to challenge the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT)’s judgment regarding settlement distribution.

The Court determined that the CAT was entitled to reach its conclusions regarding distribution and those conclusions were well within the wide powers conferred upon the CAT as an expert and specialist tribunal. 

To recap, Mr Merricks and Mastercard reached a £200 million settlement, which could only take effect if approved by the CAT as ‘just and reasonable’. By way of its judgment published in May 2025, the CAT explained why the settlement was in the interests of the class, and set out a distribution structure which involved the allocation of the £200 million into three ‘Pots’ as follows: 

• Pot 1, consisting of £100 million, which was to go to the class members (the exact amount per class member would be determined by the level of take up);
• Pot 2, consisting of between £41 and £46 million, which represented the expenditure that Innsworth had incurred and would incur in funding the proceedings; and
• Pot 3, consisting of around £54 million, which would be used to: (i) pay some relatively minor costs and expenses; (ii) pay Innsworth a just and reasonable profit on its investment; and (iii) supplement Pot 1 if there was greater take up than anticipated. If money remained in Pot 3, it would go to the Access to Justice Foundation. 

Innsworth would receive around £68 million of the settlement proceeds, which included Pot 2 and, from Pot 3, a profit of 50 percent (around £22 million). In considering the appropriate profit, the CAT took into consideration the poor outcome for the class members – the original value of the claim was said to be about £14 billion, and the £200 million settlement represented approx. 1.4 percent of the amount originally claimed. The return for the funder had to recognise that this outcome did not reflect the public policy purposes of collective proceedings.

Innsworth was dissatisfied with the allocation of settlement proceeds and sought to bring a claim for judicial review in the High Court – there was no appeal route to the Court of Appeal as Innsworth was an intervenor (not a party) to the CAT proceedings. Innsworth’s six grounds of appeal asserted serious errors of law arising from the CAT’s allocation of funds into Pot 1 and Pot 3. Innsworth was granted permission in respect of three grounds but refused permission on the other three grounds (two of which Innsworth sought to renew at the hearing).

The Court dismissed all three of Innsworth’s grounds of appeal and refused permission to reopen the two renewed grounds. 

Lord Justice Males found that the CAT has “a very wide scope to decide how the proceeds of settlement should be distributed as between the funder and the members of the class”. A decision of the CAT in relation to settlement distribution will only be open to challenge on appeal if there is some identifiable flaw in its treatment of the question to be decided, such as a gap in logic, a lack of consistency, or a failure to take account of some material factor, which undermines the cogency of its conclusion. 

The Court emphasised that an appellate court would need to be cautious before interfering with the decision of a specialist tribunal such as the CAT on a question whether the arrangements for distributing the proceeds of a settlement are just and reasonable. While this was a claim in judicial review, and not an appeal, the Court noted that (i) there is not a great deal of difference between an appeal on a point of law and judicial review and (ii) in any event, it would be perverse to allow a non-party to a CAT proceeding to be given greater scope for challenging the CAT’s decision by way of judicial review than would be possible on an appeal on a question of law brought by a party to the proceedings. The Court therefore adopted the same approach as would apply on appeal in considering the lawfulness of the CAT’s decision. 

In relation to Innsworth’s profit, Lord Justice Males noted that the 50 percent profit was “not a bad result”, and if the case had not settled, Innsworth “would not only have borne the cost of another expensive trial, but would probably have lost its entire investment and made no profit at all”. His Lordship found that the CAT was entitled to conclude that reimbursement of Innsworth’s expenditure plus a 50 percent profit represented a fair and reasonable return in view of the 'very poor result' of the case, and that anything more would not have been appropriate. That conclusion was consistent with the objective of the collective proceedings regime, which is to facilitate access to justice for those (in particular consumers) who would otherwise not be able to access legal redress.

The judgment is R (Innsworth Capital Ltd) v Competition Appeal Tribunal [2026] EWHC 1393 (Admin) and is online here.