Credit card borrower 'tortured' by lender, says Mercantile Judge
14 March 2011
The BBC has reported the recent decision of HHJ Chambers QC sitting in the Mercantile Court in Mold, North Wales in the case of Harrison v Link Financial Ltd [2011]EWHCB3(Mercantile) in which the MBNA bank and Link were accused of 'torturing' Mr Harrison with repeated phone calls demanding repayment of his credit card debt.
Mr Harrison had his entire debt of £20,270 written off by the Judge.
This High Court case is likely to prove influential on the county courts' approach to the unfair relationship provisions and s.127 discretion to enforce under the Consumer Credit Act 1974.
The Judge denounced the tactics that MBNA and the defendant had used to force him to pay up:
"In my view, the claimant rightly complains that, mainly by MBNA but also by the defendant, he was hounded by telephone calls seeking payment of what was said to be due. The calls were a form of torture oppressively frequent in amount and often without attribution to an identifiable number. It seems to me that such conduct has no proper function in the recovery of consumer debt...
[There] can be no excuse for conduct of which it must be supposed the sole purpose must have been to make the claimant's life so difficult that he would come to heel...
I cannot think that in a society that is otherwise so sensitive of a consumer's position this is conduct that should be countenanced"
Martin Budworth represented the successful debtor.
The BBC report can be accessed here -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/business-12622318
The full judgment on bailii can be accessed here -