Court lets woman off £8,000 Credit Card debts.

BBC News

A decision by a county court judge could mean thousands of borrowers being able to renege on their debts. Judge Jacqueline Smart at South Shields county court has decided that the MBNA credit card company cannot demand the repayment of a customer's debt.

It tried to force Mrs Lynne Thorius to repay the £8,000 she owed on her card. But the Judge decided there had been an unfair relationship between Mrs Thorius and MBNA because of the way she had been sold payment protection insurance.

The debtors rebellion continues.. the potential to use this precedent and point of law where PPI has been miss-sold is huge.

yup this is may be able to set some sort of precedent but the banks are well represented in congress and i would believe courts...possibly even among the judges ranks so i don't know how much momentum this could get

The big thing would be finding a court case where a judge reduces the amount of Mortgage debt (principal) a homeowner owe's (not interest rate).....I remember Michael Hudson (author) writing about some law that could be used to leverage this perspective in the courts but i don't recall that occuring in court yet.

I'm all for revolt, but this is ludicrous. So the person racked up 8k in debt on her card and now gets to talk away scot free? How is that any different from the banks being evil, exactly?

Two sides of the same coin, just because she's some poor sap who couldn't keep the cards in her pocket and went shopping doesn't mean she should get away without paying her debts. Half the problem with the economy is due to people racking up debt that they can never pay back, do this for a few too many people and the economy will collapse just as fast as it would if we keep bailing the banks out.

PPI is such a scam. I had bought that for years, but then when I was unable to pay the bills, they would not honor it. $7.99 a month for 5 years and it meant nothing.

MBNA is a scam too. I financed a Gateway puter through them and paid on time every month. Then one month they did not post a payment that I had made, even though they had cashed the check, and even after I sent in photocopies of the canceled check and spent months trying to get it fixed, they would not even credit the payment to my account. In the meantime they were charging me huge nonpayment and late fees and tripled my minimum payment. I flatout refused to send in another cent until they fixed it. Over ten years later, they still have not credited that payment to my account. I got sued over it last year, and it took nearly a year for it to be thrown out of court.

[edit on 10/1/2009 by Jessicamsa]

reply to post by cpdaman


Well I do expect the banking industry to come out firing with all guns on this issue, but as I understand it there is a large number of companies in the UK that have been waiting on this type of precedent to bring similar cases. So I feel this has the potential to get interesting.

reply to post by D.E.M.


I do agree with you about the repaying debt... but for some, like me, it is the proof that I've been lied to, that I've been scammed again by the banking system. It's not necessarily about how to get away with NOT repaying debt, but as I see it about removing the scams these companies run.

Just look at the anger caused over a sink plug that one minister put through their expenses in the UK.. the amount was not the issue (£0.98).. but the proof they were scamming the system was important, and it was enough to create a huge wave of anger, and that anger has not gone away.

I see this as having that same potential, which may end up at nothing, however I feel it's usually the little things that cause the most problems.

reply to post by Jessicamsa


I'm hear your pain and glad that it is behind you now. I was miss-sold insurance to cover me if anything happened, paid for it for years until my accountant informed me that the policy didn't cover self employed people like myself. Was pretty p*ssed as at the time I had no legal recourse to reclaim the money I had paid out.

[edit on 1/10/09 by thoughtsfull]