Judgment on the admissibility of an appeal brought by Cityhook against a decision by the OFT to close an investigation into allegations that the Chapter I prohibition (contained in section 2 of the Competition Act 1998) had been infringed.
The Tribunal held that, although the OFT’s case closure letter was ambiguous, the OFT had not made a decision as to whether the Chapter I prohibition had been infringed. There was therefore no appealable decision and the appeal was dismissed.
The Tribunal noted that it was a somewhat incongruous result that a sufficiently interested person had a right of appeal on the merits to the Tribunal against a non-infringement decision, whereas in cases where the evidence supported a finding of potential infringement but where the Authority chose to close the file without reaching a final decision, such a person had no right of appeal on the merits.
