Yes please NWJ. Could you PM me? Pete

Bad luck and bad news all round. This bit strikes me as being of interest: Should this be acceptable? Any 'normal' business has to keep important documentation for, what is it, six years? So surely for any account less than six years old the creditor must be able to produce the original application / agreement? IMHO it beggars belief that such an important document can be destroyed on a whim and for the courts to uphold the right to do this?

OK, so: 1) How does one go about instructing counsel? 2) What's the likely cost for a case of this nature? 3) How does one judge whether one has a fighting chance of winning before deciding to instruct. For example, in Joan of Arc's case referred to - would it have been worth instructing? On the balance of probabilities? Pete

Hi Pank The correct phrase is 'WITHOUT PREJUDICE'. IMHO, if you are simply writing a reply as per my post I wouldn't bother with 'WITHOUT PREJUDICE'. It's really only of use if what you are writing is not something you would want brought up in court, say you are negotiating a potential settlement figure even though you are denying the debt then that would not look so good if the creditor included a copy of the negotiation in the court bundle; in that case all your negotiating letters would be headed 'WITHOUT PREJUDICE' In your case you are simply challenging the admissibility of documentation that the creditor supplied and you wouldn't have any objection to the judge seeing that.

If it were me I would simply write stating two things: 1) Nothing will be discussed by phone, only in writing. 2) The documents purporting to be the agreement and T&Cs are illegible and fail to meet the requirements of the copies of docs regs. You can't read them therefore you can obviously not comment further in any way until legible documents are received. Pete

Hopefully so!

Reading them as we speak. Thanks basa. Exciting thing to be doing on a Saturday night eh? Sad or what!

Milly (or basa.....), could you possibly email me a copy of these unamended regs? I'll PM you my email if you OK it. Pete

Milly's point concerning the points raised by Pr Mcleod are certainly interesting. Section 2(4) of the agreements regulations reads thus: Now following my reading of this it clearly states that the "Key Financial Information" a) has to preceed the signature box and b) has to be shown together with the signature box. I read that as meaning that the prescribed terms cannot come after the signature or be on the reverse of the agreement? Pete

Milly You're not starting any wars, you are doing good service. It's only by people like you digging out and publicising these nuggets of information that we are able to debate the issues. Debate, even 'robust' debate is not arguing, it's debate which is healthy, it's how we establish the truth of these matters. The more opinions the better IMHO. I would leave the information on here Milly, I really would.

That is brilliant Milly! Well done to you. I will be VERY interested to read the reply.

This was the crux of my reasons for disputing the judgement: If this were true then there would be nothing to stop a creditor circumventing the provisions of the act by terminating the agreement, as once terminated they could litigate to their heart's content. This wouldn't make logical sense. Every case brought by a DCA (or nearly every case) concerns a terminated agreement and 78(6) would be ineffectual if Brown was correct. Surely that cannot be the effect willed by Parliament when they passed the act?

Just to clarify, this does not apply to pre-2006 agreements? The requirements of the C CA 1974 still apply pre-2006?

I really must be getting too old for this as I'm not clear about what's being implied. Are you stating that, as a result of the Rankine case(s) a precedent has been set whereby, post-termination of an agreement, it's not possible to issue a section 77/78 demand to the original creditor? The argument regarding section 142 I understand but if section 77/78 no longer applies then there is no protection for the debtor against enforcement measures being taken? In which case a lender can terminate the agreement and then take the debtor straight to court, ignoring section 78(6)?

Just a general point of order. Instead of simply posting the word "subbing" or similar and hence potentially cluttering up a thread with non-relevant posts if you look at the top of each page of any thread there is a button labled 'Thread Tools'. If you click on this there's an entry labled 'Subscribe to this Thread' (assuming you haven't already subscribed), if you click that and then confirm it you will subscribe to the thread without cluttering it up. Thanks.

Don't get worried by all this A+. In general terms if the case were to proceed to court then the parties would be ordered to produce original documents to the court under the Standard Directions section of CPR Part 27. If the lender were then to start saying that the original document cannot be found then all sorts of other rules come into play under the auspices of the Civil Evidence Act 1995. At this point things would become very messy indeed for the lender and it's unlikely they would go to these lengths. It's a high probability that if they cannot produce the original document, especially where it could be reasonably deduced that the copy (as in your case) is not strictly kosher that the lender would run a mile.

Pank, I think a Lay Representative is what you are seeking. This is covered by the Practice Direction Supplements to CPR Part 27 as follows:

No worries A+ Don't forget that if they do take you to court then you will be able to force them to either a) produce the original agreement, not a copy, the original signed bit of paper or b) produce a sworn witness, who you are entitled to cross-examine, who will state on oath that they know for a fact that the copy is an accurate and true copy of the original document. They might wave a doctored bit of paper at you now in the hope that you'll capitulate but if it goes to court it's a whole different game!

Please don't think I'm trying to be officious, and I'm certainly not a member of the site team but can we try and keep this thread clear of 'clutter' and off-topic posts? It's a very important thread and difficult enough to navigate as it is and I'd hate to see people put off by having to wade through OT posts as well. Thanks everyone.

Regarding the Litigation Friend issue there are procedures to be followed. CPR 21 states: The full CPR can be seen here: PRACTICE DIRECTION – CHILDREN AND PROTECTED PARTIES Your 'friend' needs to complete and file forn N235 which can be found here: The requested resource (/HMCSCourtFinder/tiles/Her Majesty's Courts Service -Forms and Guidance) is not available

If it's no clearer than the original then it doesn't comply with section 2(1) of the copies of documents regulations and should be ruled as such in court. IMHO there's no way that they can get judgement based on that document as the document is central to the entire case. What do others think?

Well spotted you two!! What a team we all make together!

/\/\/\ See what I mean? A four line post takes up a whole firefox screen on my iMac!

Do we really have to have all of these links and warnings in the user info sidebar? They make the threads look really cluttered and nasty apart from making it very time consuming to scroll through threads - even a one line post takes up half a screen because of all this clutter! It's really annoying.

It looks to me as though all the prescribed terms are there and so the agreement is more than likely to be valid and enforceable. Sorry if that's not what you wanted to hear. Mind you, if it really is that hard to read you might have a case under the 'copies of documents' regulations, section 2(1) - legibility? A long shot but you might consider it.