Lesley Hannah

Partner
London

OVERVIEW

A qualified solicitor-advocate, Lesley focuses on - often complex and cross-border - competition damages litigation.

Expertise

Lesley has extensive experience in managing multi-party claims and litigating against multiple defendants. She possesses considerable litigation experience in both the Competition Appeal Tribunal and the English High Court. Besides her expertise in dealing with follow on competition damages, she also manages abuse of dominance disputes, often against global corporates including tech giants.

She uses her expertise in European and Competition law together with her strong commercial acumen to focus and narrow the areas of dispute and to achieve compensation for businesses that have suffered losses as a result of illegal anticompetitive conduct.

Clients

Lesley advises and represents major corporate clients across a broad range of sectors and industries. She understands that litigation can be an unwelcome distraction for a business and makes sure that her clients achieve the best result with minimum risk and disruption.

Lesley has been one of the lead partners on the Hausfeld team dealing with:
- The opt-out collective action filed with the CAT on behalf of an estimated 19.5 million eligible UK users of smartphones and tablets running on Google’s Android operating system relating to excessive and unlawful charges on purchase in the Google Play store. The claim alleges that Google unfairly restricts consumers from accessing potential competition from other app distributors, by requiring smartphone manufacturers to pre-install a bundle of Google’s proprietary apps and services including the Google Play Store as well as imposing other contractual and technical restrictions.
- The representative collective action filed with the CAT on behalf of some 19.6 million eligible UK iPhone and iPad users relating to excessive and unlawful charges by the Apple App Store. The claim alleges that Apple’s conduct violates section 18 of the UK Competition Act 1998 and Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
- Air Cargo, bringing claims in the High Court on behalf of some 100 corporate groups against British Airways in relation to the worldwide cartel in air freight surcharges - one of the largest and lengthiest competition damages action brought in Europe to date. The claim settled after a complex 6-month mediation process in December 2018.
- Bringing an abuse of dominance claim against Google linked to the EC’s investigation into Google Android and Google Shopping.
Hannah was the partner leading the team which:
- Filed a CPR 19.6 representative action brought on behalf of Duncan McCann, on behalf of up to 5 million British children aged under 13 and their parents in the High Court – alleging that YouTube’s methods of targeting underage audiences and harvesting their data constitute major violations of the UK Data Protection Act and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), both of which were designed to protect citizens’ privacy rights.

'Lesley Hannah is super-smart and unerringly focused on strategic outcomes. Her advice is clear, direct and well thought out... [she] combines technical excellence with innovative thinking and a fearless attitude to take on the most powerful defendants.'

Chambers UK, 2023

Lesley Hannah has already established herself as one of the top practitioners in this area and is excellent.

Legal 500, 2023

Experienced, calm, knowledgeable, strategic, innovative. Lesley has a determined yet approachable manner. As a client you know from the outset she is on your side and is going to fight your corner.

Legal 500 UK, 2022