LONDON—Covington has been recognised at The Lawyer Awards 2024, winning the Competition and Regulatory Team of the Year category alongside the teams at five other law firms who successfully defended the major UK and European mobile network operators against a high-stake standalone damages claim brought by Phones 4U (in administration).
Phones 4U alleged that its entry into administration in 2014 was the result of anticompetitive collusion between EE, Vodafone UK, O2 (and their then shareholders Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Vodafone Group and Telefonica), which led to EE, Vodafone and O2 not renewing their distribution contracts with the company.
The Covington team representing Deutsche Telekom was led by partner Louise Freeman, with special counsel Laurie-Anne Grelier.
This case was the largest standalone competition action to reach trial in the UK. The claim was not issued until December 2018, four years after Phones 4U’s entry into administration, and took a further four years to come to trial. It culminated in an 11-week liability trial in May-July 2022 which heard evidence from over 40 witnesses and attracted significant publicity.
Following the trial, in November 2023, Mr Justice Roth rejected all of Phones 4U's claims for breach of competition law, breach of contract and tort-based claims. His 208-page judgment is extremely detailed and has been hailed as a leading authority on the topic of information exchange, which formed the core of Phones 4U’s allegations. It also adds to the expanding body of decisions addressing contractual duties of good faith, as well as addressing other issues of fundamental importance to all litigators (including document preservation and witness familiarisation).
At a consequentials hearing in December 2023, Mr Justice Roth rejected Phones 4U's application for permission to appeal and made substantial cost awards in favour of each of the Defendants. Phones 4U has now been granted permission to appeal on some issues from to the Court of Appeal.
The annual Lawyer Awards celebrate legal excellence demonstrated by law firms, legal teams, and individuals in the UK.
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