British Gas guilty of harassment by Court of Appeal for threatening letters

MSE_Martin

What is this all about?

A laywer friend recently passed me a story about British Gas repeatedly sending a woman unjustified computerised demands then taking her to court for unpaid bills. After several months of getting nowhere Lisa Ferguson decided to turn the tables on British Gas and take them to court instead for harrassment.

What a wonderful tale of common sense!


Great thanks to the Rollonfriday website (for lawyers) for highlighting the following gem. Here's a quote from the Court of Appeal judgement:

"It is one of the glories of this country that every now and then one of its citizens is prepared to take a stand against the big battalions of government or industry. Such a person is Lisa Ferguson, the claimant in this case. Because she funds the claim out of her personal resources, she does so at considerable risk: were she ultimately to lose she would probably have to pay British Gas's considerable costs."

"What British Gas was threatening was undoubtedly serious. Mr Porter [British Gas's QC] sought to downgrade it by saying that Ms Ferguson knew the claims and threats were unjustified. That is absurd: a victim of harassment will almost always know that it is unjustified. The Act is there to protect people against unjustified harassment. Indeed if the impugned conduct is justified it is unlikely to amount to harassment at all."

"Mr Porter also made the point that the correspondence was computer generated and so, for some reason which I do not really follow, Ms Ferguson should not have taken it as seriously as if it had come from an individual. But real people are responsible for programming and entering material into the computer. It is British Gas's system which, at the very least, allowed the impugned conduct to happen."

"Moreover the threats and demands were to be read by a real person, not by a computer. A real person is likely to suffer real anxiety and distress if threatened in the way which Ms Ferguson was."

If you would like to read the full judgement. Here is a link to it as a Word download from the Rollonfriday website.

And click reply to discuss the case.

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digp

What ridiculous arguments being put forward by BG's silk!

And their costs: [FONT=&quot]British Gas, whose claim for costs in this Court alone (if they had won) amounted to £20,368.75. Below, British Gas was ordered to pay £10,575.

And the judge goes on to say: [/FONT] [FONT=&quot]28 ... One simply does not know whether what happened to Ms Ferguson is an extraordinary one-off case, or whether there are so many similar cases that senior management must know about it but are prepared to tolerate the position because it brings in the money. And even if liability can be avoided on that basis, there is the real potential for liability on the “ ought to know” basis – see below. [/FONT]

And...:

[FONT=&quot]50 I agree that Judge Seymour QC was entirely right not to strike out this claim. Like Lord Justice Jacob, I think it deplorable that, both by evidence and by argument, British Gas sought below to bolster their contention that the claim on its face was incapable of succeeding with untried explanations or excuses for their conduct. It is therefore worth reiterating that the court on an application such as this is required to assume that the claimant will prove all that she has alleged and that this will be the totality of the evidence. It is only if some unrevealed but incontestable fact will render the case hopeless that evidence can be adduced in support of such an application. This apart (and nothing advanced by British Gas comes close to it), if the claim is capable of succeeding, it is at trial, if at all, that the explanations and excuses become relevant. [/FONT]

And a part of the decision which should be sent to all local authorities:

[FONT=&quot]53 Parliament's intention in passing the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 was to criminalise the kind of serious and persistent unwarranted threat which is alleged here, giving a right of civil action as a fallback. In this situation it ought not to be left to hardy individuals to put their savings and homes at risk by suing. The primary responsibility should rest upon local public authorities which possess the means and the statutory powers to bring alleged harassers, however impersonal and powerful, before the local justices. [/FONT]

reehsetin

absurd to say the machines control the employees and not the other way around, all it needed was one person to take ownership of the problem and get it stopped,

RAS

See also http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1517601

Some interesting news on 1st Credit and BG in the same day.

berternie_2

Well done to this lady! I had a similar problem with BT and went through 6 months of hell due to generated letters threatening me with bayliffs!
If it happens to you don't give up!

AdRock

I had the same problem with British Gas when I was with them.

They reckoned I owed them £144 which I paid and I had evidence from the bank that I had paid. They swore blind that I hadn't but I think they got the message after several annoying phone calls.

I never even got an apology and I swore I would never go back to British Gas ever again.

The last time I spoke to them, they even had the cheek to ask if i wanted to go back to BG......what a joke!!

lady_stardust

This is very interesting because Southern Water keep sending me computer generated letters addressed to the previous occupant threatening bailiffs, even though I am paying for their water too. When I rang them up to query this, they said that I am not liable for these bills at all but because they cannot locate the previous occupants the computer will keep sending me these letters and I should just ignore them....then why send them?

RedSnowDonkey

I had a very similar problem with British Gas (Scottish Gas, in fact) but had NEVER been their customer.

They switched their billing system over, muddled up the addresses, and kept sending me someone else's bills... and then demands, and then threatening letters... and they wouldn't accept that I wasn't their customer. Even going so far as to suggest that Eon (Powergen at the time) were charging me for gas and electricity fraudulently!

I had to do all the leg-work, checking with Eon whether they had my meters registered properly and find out where the ones BG were quoting were actually located. It turned out that BG had removed the flat number from the address, so "16/3F1" (third floor, first flat - not mine) became "16 3" (third flat - mine!)... and they started from there...

Once I'd worked it all out and confirmed it back to them, the letters stopped... but they never apologised. I even phoned them and they had the gaul to say "you didn't ask us to apologise, so we didn't". Amazing.

I think I've kept all the letters and correspondence, so I wonder if I can raise a court case too...?

Deanevans

Some years ago I kept receiving bills from BG much higher than expected after changing away from their dual fuel supply. When they threatened Court I just said that I would be happy to go to Court to highlight their incompetence, told them what I knew I owed them, based on the meter readings and eventually they accepted payment for that

checkmate

What a victory. I have a sheaf of papers regarding a dispute I had with BG over nearly a year. In the end, after several letters to the BG chairman and a successful appeal to Energywatch, I did get some miserly compensation and a grudging apology. I have also recently discovered that the central heating boiler that I had BG install for me some years ago (which exercise was itself fraught with delays, recalls and repeated complaints) has become blocked up with what the engineer called black iron oxide bncause BG should have flushed out the radiators as part of the installation. I now badmouth BG at every opportunity but I wonder how many people who complain about BG have shares with them. either personally or as part of a pernsion? The biggest problem with going to law is it can be a gamble and like any gambling, you have to be able to afford to lose a lot of money.

cazraz_2

Digp's underlined the bit about local authorities taking the big organisations to Court - The Court of Appeal are showing just how out of touch they are!

I have had treatment amounting to mugging from my local Council which has led to me potentially losing hundreds of thousands of pounds and suffering years of serious distress.

The real issue underlining the fab Ms Ferguson's case is that normal working people cannot pursue justice in this Country because of the legal costs involved and the fact they may well lose their home and be bankrupted if costs are awarded against them. The system glibly answers this by saying legal insurance should cover the costs - well even if you have it it is likely only to scratch the surface of the sums involved.

Sure you can take a small claim up to £5k but everyday people are suffering major injustice that is above this limit and they have to try to get these arrogant, smug organisations to admit their fault - which they very rarely do.

Ombudsmen and regulators are in bed with those they should police - witness the FSA and the measley 2% of successful claimants to the Local Government Ombudsman.

We need pressure for a cost-effective way for working people (who don't get legal aid remember) to pursue public and private sector orgs in the Courts. Then things will change dramatically in this Country - for the better.