Judgement on Thursday 24th April CONCLUSIONS and JUDGEMENT

[Amethyst]

The handing down of judgment will be at the Royal Courts of Justice, court No 73. It's scheduled from 10am to 4.15pm.

COURT 73
Before MR JUSTICE ANDREW SMITH
Thursday 24 April 2008
At 10:00
For Judgment
2007-1186 Office of Fair Trading v Abbey National PLC

There are an unspecified number of public and press places in the courtroom and depending on demand, there may be a feed room for overspill but RCJ are unable to confirm it as yet.

Prior to Thursday the 'embargoed judgment' is only going to a small number of the legal teams of each party but the banks and OFT themselves are not privy to it and will hear it first hand on Thursday.

There are a few Beagles members attending the hearing and information will be reported back to the site as soon as is possible.


Thanks to EXC.

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Re: Judgement on Thursday 24th April Confirmed

Conclusion


449. As for the position at common law, I accept the Banks’ submission that none of the terms which I have considered (the terms now generally used by the Banks for personal current accounts other than basic accounts and also certain of the terms used until recently by Clydesdale and RBSG) could be unenforceable on the grounds that they are penal (paragraph 323 above).



450. With regard to the 1999 Regulations, I conclude that, of the terms now generally used by the Banks for personal current accounts (other than basic accounts), those of HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide and RBSG are in plain intelligible language, and those of Abbey, Barclays, Clydesdale and HBOS are largely in plain intelligible language but not so in certain specific and relatively minor respects (paragraph 293 above). However, I reject the Banks’ contention that the Relevant Terms are exempt from assessment as to fairness under Regulation 6(2) of the 1999 Regulations (paragraph 421 above). This does not mean that the Relevant Terms are necessarily to be regarded as unfair under Regulation 5(1) or that they are not binding upon consumers under Regulation 8(1): those are not questions for me to decide in this judgment. For the reasons that I have explained, I decline to make any declaration as to the meaning and effect of the requirement of good faith in Regulation 5(1) of the 1999 Regulations (paragraph 448 above).

[Tools]

Re: Judgement on Thursday 24th April Confirmed

The Judge will not be making a decision on any of the stayed cases until the case management hearing which will be held on the 22nd May.


Brian Doctors is ''unavailable'' today or for the foreseeable future.

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Re: Judgement on Thursday 24th April Confirmed

Conclusions about whether terms provide for sums to be payable upon breach
323. I therefore conclude that none of these provisions which the OFT has identified means that the customer is under a contractual commitment such that Relevant Charges could be a penalty for breach of the commitment, and so unenforceable at common law. I have reached this conclusion without resort to Regulation 7(2) of the 1999 Regulations. However, if there were doubt about the meaning of these provisions, they would be given the interpretation most favourable to the consumer. This would mean that they would be construed so as to avoid customers being under any contractual commitment. (It might be suggested that it would be most favourable to consumers to interpret them so as to give rise to contractual commitments so that they might enjoy the common law protection relating to penalties. However, in my judgment, Regulation 7(2) operates similarly to the principle that a contract is to be construed contra proferentem. This does not mean that, if there is ambiguity, the court will invariably adopt the meaning that turns out in the circumstances that have arisen to be less favourable to the party putting the contractual terms forward, but simply that it will construe the contractual terms themselves so as to be the more
MR JUSTICE ANDREW SMITH
Approved Judgment
OFT
v
Abbey National PLC & 7 ors.
onerous upon him: see Skillion plc v Keltec Industrial Research Ltd, [1992] 1 EGLR 123 at p.126 per Knox J.)

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Re: Judgement on Thursday 24th April Confirmed

Conclusion about whether the fairness of the Relevant Terms is precluded from the assessment because they "relate....to the adequacy of the price or remuneration, as against the goods or services suplied in exchange"

421

I therefore conclude that the relevant terms are NOT exempt from assessment under the 1999 regulations. This does not seem to me suprising.

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Re: Judgement on Thursday 24th April Confirmed

http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/jud...ent_240408.pdf


lol saves typing