Ruling of the Tribunal on the admissibility of parts of Hutchison 3G UK’s (“H3G”) pleadings in its appeal against OFCOM’s decision in its 2007 Mobile Call Termination Statement to impose price controls on the mobile network operators and on the admissibility of parts of H3G’s statement of intervention in BT’s appeal against the same OFCOM decision.
The Tribunal ruled that parts of H3G’s pleadings, both in its own appeal and in BT’s appeal, were inadmissible.
In relation to H3G’s own appeal, the Tribunal held that the arguments which H3G was seeking to advance had not formed part of its original case as set out in its notice of appeal. The Tribunal considered whether to grant permission to H3G to amend its pleading to introduce the new arguments and/or new grounds of appeal, but refused permission as none of the conditions of rule 11(3) of the Tribunal Rules for the introduction of new grounds of appeal was met.
In relation to BT’s appeal, the Tribunal ruled that parts of H3G’s pleading were inadmissible in so far as they duplicated issues properly included in H3G’s own appeal but which were not raised in BT’s appeal, raised issues which H3G had sought to raise in H3G’s appeal but which the Tribunal had ruled should be excluded, or raised issues which were reliant on passages in evidence adduced by
BT which were not properly in support of issues raised by BT’s notice of appeal.
