charges on account with previous bank

[maggie]

we used to have a current account ,an overdraft,and 2 loans with lloyds bank over six years ago.we must have incurred well over 3,000 in charges or more and unfortunately,we lost our home through this,as my husband was made redundant,and by the time their insurance company for their loans paid up,our charges went sky high,and we were not in a position to repay them,not only did we receive charges on the bank account ,but also charges from a seperate loan we had with another company.would we be justified in trying to reclaim all these charges back as it was over 6 yrs ago, we closed our current account with lloyds bank,and opened another with the halifax when my husband found employment.

[BankFodder]

You really are in a difficult position. Everyone claims in Contract in order to use the Small Claims Track so as to avoid the risk of incurring costs should they lose.

It also has the adantage that the process is well understood by everyone and so is the action in contract.

 

Of course, the downside is that you can olny claim as far back as 6 years. After that you are time-barred by the Limitation Act 1980 - which is linked in the library.

 

My own view is that the contract action is not the correct action. The money has not been taken in breach of any contract. It has been taken on the basis of an invalid term. An invalid term in a contract tends to mean that the term never existed. This means that the money which was taken was yours - and in fact remains yours. It is has merely been "converted" by the person who has taken it. Conversion really means a civil form of theft. (It lacks the dishonesty). It indicates that someone else is now excercising rights of ownership over something which is really yours.

 

There is an action for Conversion. However, it has a short limitation period but also money is specifically excluded as a form of property which can be converted. The law of conversion refers only to conversion of "goods".

 

The way to go on this would be to say that the bank is your trustee. Also that they have a fiduciary duty. Having a fiduciary duty means that the Bank has extremely strict duties towards you to be very straight-dealing, to be open and to be extremely accurate as to their assessment of the enforceability/validity of any money they take from you.

You would then have to argue that your money is the subject of the trust between you and the bank, the bank has breached their fiduciary duty towards you and their duty as trustee and in breach of that trust they have converted the trust property to their own use.

 

This argument, if it could be sustained in court would lead to dissolution of any limitation periods whatsoever, opening the way to recovery of all charges ever taken plus a claim for punitive damages.

 

However, a claim of this kind would have to be brought very carefully - after a lot thought and advice. There is no doubt that this would be the worst thing which could happen to the banks or other institutions. They would pour unlimited funds into defending a claim of this nature as the consequences for them would be devastating.

The costs of losing such a claim would be devasting for the claimant.

 

It would take a legally aided claimant, a legal team with fight, imagination, an ambition to win, a lust for glory and a philosophical approach to the possibility of a humiliating loss and years of wasted work.

[BankFodder]

By the way, are you still repaying anything to Lloyds?

[maggie]

no.we cleared it all over 5or 6 yrs ago,by having to pay £25.00 per week ,but they still put a notice of default on our credit rating.i went in to see the manager about the defaults and asked them to remove them as it was not our fault the insurance payments from the loans (which was lloyds own insurance we had to take out the same time as the loans)were being paid into our account 7 or 8 days late,which meant we were incurring charges all the time.

[maggie]

This topic was closed on 03/06/19.

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