The Court of Appeal’s dismissal of Blur drummer Dave Rowntree’s £200 million collective action against PRS for Music is the latest reminder that ambitious class actions still need more than a compelling narrative and a large headline figure.

Rowntree sought to bring proceedings on behalf of around 160,000 songwriters, arguing that PRS’s treatment of “black box” royalties—payments that cannot be matched to individual works because of incomplete data—unfairly favoured music publishers over songwriters.

The Court was unconvinced.

The Limits of Collective Litigation

At the heart of the judgment is a point that extends well beyond the music industry—collective proceedings are not a mechanism for asking courts to redesign complex commercial systems simply because some stakeholders believe they could operate more fairly.

The judges accepted that unmatched royalties present an inherently imperfect problem. If the relevant data existed, the royalties would simply be allocated correctly. Where it does not, any distribution model necessarily involves compromise.

The fatal weakness in the claim was the absence of a credible alternative. As Lord Justice Miles observed, fairness can only be assessed by comparing one workable methodology with another. The claimant offered no realistic replacement, and the Court noted that alternative approaches might simply redistribute benefits to different groups of creators rather than produce a demonstrably fairer result.

That is a significant reminder for future collective claims. Alleging that an existing system is imperfect is not enough. Claimants must show that there is a legally sustainable and objectively preferable alternative.

Another Reminder That Certification Is Not a Rubber Stamp

The decision comes against the backdrop of continued expansion in UK collective litigation. The Competition Appeal Tribunal has certified a growing number of collective proceedings in recent years, encouraging claimant firms and litigation funders to explore increasingly novel claims.

For some, the success of landmark competition cases has fuelled the perception that almost any widespread grievance can be repackaged as a class action.

This judgment points in the opposite direction.

Both the Competition Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal were prepared to examine the legal foundations of the claim rather than allowing it to proceed simply because it involved a large proposed class and substantial alleged losses. The ruling demonstrates that collective proceedings remain subject to meaningful judicial scrutiny, particularly where the underlying theory of harm is speculative or depends on broad assertions of unfairness rather than identifiable legal rights.

Litigation Funding Still Needs Strong Cases

The commercial incentives driving collective litigation are well understood. Litigation funders and claimant firms continue to search for claims capable of generating significant recoveries across large classes of claimants, with sectors ranging from financial services to digital markets—and now creative industries—increasingly viewed as fertile ground.

But the economics of collective litigation do not alter the legal test.

Courts continue to require coherent evidence, a viable cause of action and a remedy that can realistically be applied across the proposed class. Large damages estimates may attract publicity, but they cannot compensate for fundamental weaknesses in the claim itself.

A Welcome Signal for Businesses

For businesses, trade associations and membership organisations, the decision provides reassurance that courts are not prepared to transform every governance dispute or disagreement over commercial discretion into mass litigation.

That matters because the continued growth of litigation funding and an increasingly entrepreneurial claimant bar have inevitably expanded the range of disputes being presented as collective actions. Without robust judicial gatekeeping, organisations face significant pressure to settle weak claims simply to avoid the costs and uncertainty of protracted proceedings.

The Court of Appeal’s judgment reinforces the importance of that gatekeeping function. The UK’s collective actions regime exists to resolve genuine common legal issues—not to provide a vehicle for speculative claims seeking to challenge complex commercial judgments with the benefit of hindsight.

For defendants facing the next wave of collective actions, that is a welcome message.