Foodstuffs and Woolworths have up to 20 days to decide on whether to appeal the court decision blocking any takeover bids for The Warehouse.
Legal experts were surprised at yesterday's Court of Appeal decision, having previously believed the Commerce Commission faced an uphill task overturning the High Court
judgement granting the all clear to the two suitors.
"These competition issues are difficult, and it's the hard cases that go to court," said Tony Dellow, competition lawyer at Buddle Findlay.
"To me I always thought that they would get the clearance. We've got to see the reasons I guess but to me, the High Court decision was very factually-based and they're hard to turn over, so I suppose the commission's done well in that sense.
"That being the case, there must be a fair prospect of an appeal."
The reasoning behind the decision has yet to be made public, as lawyers for Foodstuffs, Woolworths and The Warehouse are still to appear before the court again to be heard on what commercially sensitive information should be deleted from the judgment that is to be made publicly available.
Simpson Grierson senior associate James Craig said the parties also needed to work out if an appeal to the Supreme Court was an option.
