statute of limitations question re 6 years back claim

Kate_Reid

I'm waiting for Halifax to file a defence against my claim for £4600.
Part of this money was charges accrued before the 6 year statutory claim period.
I have two questions re legal issues:

1 - Am I right in thinking that because the actions carried out by the bank to take the money in the first instance, are considered by OFT as unlawful, does the statutory time limit of 6 years still apply as this was not a lawful taking of money?

2- We only found out with the OFT in whenever this year that the charges were unlawful. Does this mean you have Six years from finding out that the charges were unlawful or 6 years from when the charges took place to make the claim?

HELP me - any legal people here?

Thanks
Kate

bengal-stripe

Kate_Reid wrote:

Am I right in thinking that because the actions carried out by the bank to take the money in the first instance, are considered by OFT as unlawful, does the statutory time limit of 6 years still apply as this was not a lawful taking of money?

The OFT has not come up with anything at all, regarding bank charges.

Whether or not something is unlawful is for the courts (and not the OFT) to decide. No court has ever come up with a judgement (this is due to the banks not wanting a definite judgement). At present those charges are alleged or presumed to be unlawful.

You are jumping the gun a bit, aren’t you?

thecornflake

Whether they are unlawful or not does not affect the six year limit as set out in the statute of limitations. This is a standard legal limit, and it is usually accepted as six years form the date you found out the charges were unlawful (i.e. someone told you or you read it on this site) although this has been debated so don't take this to be 100% true. Some people say it goes back from when you first send your DPA request.

You can claim past the limitation in certain circumstances and one of these is if the company specifically decieved you into thinking the charges were lawful until you found out otherwise.

The argument for this goes that becasue they were in the T&C and you trust a large corporation to not charge you unlawfully, you took it that the charges were indeed lawful at the time you opened your account (or something similar along those lines).

I don't know if more info is available here on this, it is at consumeractiongroup and from what I've seen a lot of people there have been successful going back more than 6 years.

And yes you are probably jumping the gun - I'd be surprised if you needed to justify this before you got a settlement - but it is good to be prepared. However, you have plenty of time to read up on it and get your facts straight.