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Originally posted by Frances Bennion - author of the 1974 CCA
2-Not quite what one intended
When drafting the Consumer Credit Act 1974 I did not foresee one curious outcome. It was made known in a 2008 case before His Honour Judge Simon Brown QC, sitting as a Judge of the High Court. The case was on five related claims concerning a Mr and Mrs Rankine and their financial affairs1.
His Judgment makes clear that at the hearing Judge Brown was sorely tried by the conduct of the Rankines. The Judgment says they represented themselves, and were granted the usual indulgences to litigants in person by the court and the advocates appearing for the financial institutions. However the Rankines ‗misused those indulgences . . . by producing blizzards of lengthy, argumentative and incoherent pleadings and witness statements‘. In their evidence they were ‗perversely and deliberately untruthful‘. They used arguments that were ‗pure sophistry‘ and made submissions ‗totally without factual or legal merit‘. In a blast at Mrs Rankine Judge Mason says: ‗In my judgment, Mrs Rankine was deliberately seeking to be perverse and untruthful in seeking to avoid a substantial debt despite having all the benefits of equipment she expects the credit company to pay for on her behalf. Her behaviour in Court was perverse, argumentative and obstructive.‘ That was not all. Many litigants in person plague the courts in the manner described. What was new to me was the final allegation that Judge Mason levels at Mr Rankine. ‗Recently eight (I believe) claims arrived in various courts in the Birmingham Civil Justice Centre about the Rankines‘ financial affairs. These are just five of them and an undisputed schedule of debts amounts to £20,231.50 and £17,334.80 in the cases of Mr and Mrs Rankine respectively. During evidence. Mr Rankine boasted to the Court that they had managed to wriggle out of a further £65,000 of similar debts by raising Consumer Credit Act legal technicalities, leaving the financial institutions to write them off as bad debts rather than take the trouble and expense of litigating for dubious reward by enforcement against two individuals who are apparently on income support and exempt from paying court fees.
It also emerged during evidence that Mr Rankine was seeking to make a business out of this by offering his services to others for percentage reward as a credit card buster with a website and publicity generated in the media about his ―victory‖ in the Court of Appeal in one of his cases against MNBA.‘
This sort of thing was not what was intended by those responsible for the enactment of the CCA. As Judge Mason points out, the Act was introduced to protect the individual who is unsophisticated in financial affairs and contracts with unscrupulous and sophisticated financial institutions. ‗It was not designed to help individuals in the financial services business make money out of financial institutions through exploiting its undoubted technicalities.‘ Well that was rather what I thought too, having I fear created many of the said technicalities.
1 The claims were Nos. 8BM40009-13.
When drafting the Consumer Credit Act 1974 I did not foresee one curious outcome. It was made known in a 2008 case before His Honour Judge Simon Brown QC, sitting as a Judge of the High Court. The case was on five related claims concerning a Mr and Mrs Rankine and their financial affairs1.
His Judgment makes clear that at the hearing Judge Brown was sorely tried by the conduct of the Rankines. The Judgment says they represented themselves, and were granted the usual indulgences to litigants in person by the court and the advocates appearing for the financial institutions. However the Rankines ‗misused those indulgences . . . by producing blizzards of lengthy, argumentative and incoherent pleadings and witness statements‘. In their evidence they were ‗perversely and deliberately untruthful‘. They used arguments that were ‗pure sophistry‘ and made submissions ‗totally without factual or legal merit‘. In a blast at Mrs Rankine Judge Mason says: ‗In my judgment, Mrs Rankine was deliberately seeking to be perverse and untruthful in seeking to avoid a substantial debt despite having all the benefits of equipment she expects the credit company to pay for on her behalf. Her behaviour in Court was perverse, argumentative and obstructive.‘ That was not all. Many litigants in person plague the courts in the manner described. What was new to me was the final allegation that Judge Mason levels at Mr Rankine. ‗Recently eight (I believe) claims arrived in various courts in the Birmingham Civil Justice Centre about the Rankines‘ financial affairs. These are just five of them and an undisputed schedule of debts amounts to £20,231.50 and £17,334.80 in the cases of Mr and Mrs Rankine respectively. During evidence. Mr Rankine boasted to the Court that they had managed to wriggle out of a further £65,000 of similar debts by raising Consumer Credit Act legal technicalities, leaving the financial institutions to write them off as bad debts rather than take the trouble and expense of litigating for dubious reward by enforcement against two individuals who are apparently on income support and exempt from paying court fees.
It also emerged during evidence that Mr Rankine was seeking to make a business out of this by offering his services to others for percentage reward as a credit card buster with a website and publicity generated in the media about his ―victory‖ in the Court of Appeal in one of his cases against MNBA.‘
This sort of thing was not what was intended by those responsible for the enactment of the CCA. As Judge Mason points out, the Act was introduced to protect the individual who is unsophisticated in financial affairs and contracts with unscrupulous and sophisticated financial institutions. ‗It was not designed to help individuals in the financial services business make money out of financial institutions through exploiting its undoubted technicalities.‘ Well that was rather what I thought too, having I fear created many of the said technicalities.
1 The claims were Nos. 8BM40009-13.
http://www.francisbennion.com/pdfs/f...drida-book.pdf
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