LONDON, Feb 26 (Reuters) – Amazon on Thursday lost its latest bid to try to throw out two mass lawsuits from retailers and consumers worth up to 4 billion pounds ($5.41 billion) for allegedly abusing its dominant position.
Andreas Stephan, a competition law academic, brought one of the cases on behalf of over 200,000 third-party retailers, worth up to 2.7 billion pounds.
His lawyers allege that Amazon manipulates the “Buy Box” feature on its website to its own advantage and favours products that use Amazon’s own logistics centres and delivery network.
Consumer advocate Robert Hammond separately brought a case valued at up to 1.3 billion pounds on behalf of millions of Amazon customers for similar alleged abuses of dominance.
Amazon has previously said the claims are without merit. It had argued the cases should not be certified to proceed, an early step in the proceedings, including because the economic methodology for proving the cases was flawed.
The Competition Appeal Tribunal last year certified both cases on an opt-out basis, meaning members of the claimant class would be part of the case unless they decide otherwise.
Amazon sought permission to appeal against that decision, but the Court of Appeal refused permission on Thursday.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
($1 = 0.7390 pounds)
(Reporting by Sam Tobin; editing by William James)
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