BAHRAIN Law and Practice Contributed by: Noor Al Rayes, Bradley Price, Mohamed Al Sari and Raghad Al Matrook, Al Tamimi & Company
This general limitation period also interacts with the admissibility requirement under Article (52)(2) of the Competition Law (see 2.1 Statutory Basis for the stat- utory conditions governing admissibility). Prospective claimants should therefore lodge a complaint with the Authority, or pursue any available administrative appeal, sufficiently early to ensure that admissibility is established well before the general limitation period expires on the underlying civil claim. 3.2 Typical Length of Private Antitrust Litigation There is limited empirical data on the duration of private antitrust litigation in Bahrain, given the small number of reported cases to date. Based on the typical timeline for civil litigation of comparable com - plexity, a private antitrust claim can be expected to take approximately two to three years to reach a first-instance judgment before the High Civil Court, depending on the complexity of the economic and factual issues involved, the volume of evidence, and the court’s caseload. Where either party exercises its right of appeal – first to the Court of Appeal and, on points of law, to the Court of Cassation – the overall timeline is likely to extend meaningfully, potentially to four years or more before a case reaches final resolution. This is likely to be compounded by the relative novelty of Bah - rain’s competition regime, and the corresponding limited familiarity of the courts and practitioners with the underlying economic evidence typical of antitrust cases.
Accordingly, parties affected by the same anti-com - petitive conduct – whether competitors, direct cus - tomers or consumers – must generally bring individual claims. In practice, however, multiple claimants may seek to consolidate related claims into joint proceed - ings where the underlying facts and legal issues are sufficiently connected, subject to the court’s discre - tion. Article (31) of the Competition Law also reflects this individual approach by permitting “anyone having a legitimate interest” to lodge a complaint with the Competition Authority, rather than establishing any representative or collective complaint mechanism. 4.2 Opting In or Out As explained in 4.1 Statutory Basis , Bahrain does not have a class or collective action regime, so the concepts of opting in or opting out have no direct application. Each affected party must independently decide whether to pursue its own claim, and there is no procedural mechanism by which a claimant can bind, or be bound by, the litigation decisions of other similarly affected parties. 4.3 Direct/Indirect Purchasers The Competition Law does not expressly distinguish between direct and indirect purchasers for the pur - poses of standing to bring a private damages claim. General civil law principles apply, meaning that any party – whether a direct counterparty to the infring - ing conduct or an indirect purchaser further down the supply chain – may in principle bring a claim, provided it can establish that it suffered actual loss and that the loss was caused by the infringement. In practice, an indirect purchaser is likely to face a more difficult evidentiary burden in establishing the necessary causal link between the infringement and its own loss, given the absence of a direct contractual relationship with the infringing party and the addition - al step of tracing the overcharge through the supply chain. There is no reported Bahraini case law address - ing this issue, so the practical treatment of indirect purchaser claims remains untested. 4.4 Class Certification Given the absence of a class or collective action regime (see 4.1 Statutory Basis ), there is no class certification procedure under Bahraini law. Claims
4. Class and Collective Actions 4.1 Statutory Basis
The Competition Law does not provide a statutory basis for class or collective actions, and Bahrain’s civil procedure rules do not recognise a representa - tive or class action mechanism comparable to those available in some other jurisdictions. There is no cer - tification procedure, representative claimant regime, or mechanism for aggregating the claims of multiple unrelated claimants into a single proceeding.
27 A NTITRUST LI T IGATI O N 2026
CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook