Judgment of the Tribunal specifying the domicile date, which is the date specified in a collective proceedings order (“CPO”) for the purposes of determining whether a person is domiciled in the United Kingdom. The domicile date operates to determine which persons who fall within the class definition are automatically included in the proceedings unless they opt out, and which persons will only be included if they opt in.
Mr Merricks sought a determination that the domicile date should be 6 September 2016, the date on which the claim form was issued (the “Claim Form date”). Mastercard submitted that the domicile date should be 18 August 2021, the date the Tribunal held that a CPO would be granted: [2021] CAT 28 (“Merricks 2”) (“the CPO date”). If the domicile date is the Claim Form date, then all individuals who otherwise meet the class definition and were alive at that date are within the class. But if the domicile date is the CPO date, then those who were alive on 6 September 2016 but have died before 18 August 2021 are outside the class.
Mr Merricks sought specification of the Claim Form date because some three million people with valid claims when these proceedings were started will have died by 2021 and would otherwise be excluded.
The Tribunal held that the domicile date should be specified as the Claim Form date, i.e. 6 September 2016. However, the Tribunal noted that it had reached this decision on the particular circumstances of this case. Moreover, the Tribunal considered that for CPO applications in the future, it would be undesirable for the class definition to depend on the domicile date: the two concepts should be kept separate, and the domicile date limited to its particular statutory purpose.
The Tribunal granted Mr Merricks permission to amend the claim form to reflect the decision in Merricks 2 and the domicile date, and to permit claims to be continued by the personal or authorised representatives of class members who die after the proceedings were commenced.
