Bank of Ireland increase differential on tracker rates

Justin
Many thanks

Reply to the comment left by "Justin Selig" at "30/03/2014 - 13:35":

Thanks Justin, that's reassuring 🙂
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Reply to the comment left by "Justin Selig" at "30/03/2014 - 13:35":

thanks justin .

Justin, Many Thanks.

LEGAL ACTION UPDATE:-

As you know, we have been liaising with insurers who specialise in funding litigation and insuring third party costs risks. We have had some productive discussions and in particular they believe that a new insurer on the market may be able to offer us a package which would include funding and third party insurance rolled into one. This option would mean that the Law Department would also have to take on some of the litigation risk by entering into a conditional fee agreement. We are still exploring how this would work in practice as this is a relatively new product, and we need to be sure that the finer details will work. We hope to have some more concrete information in the next couple of weeks.

To explain why this is taking some time, we should perhaps explain a little bit about how litigation funding products work:

After the event insurance for third party costs (ATE insurance) and litigation funding work by covering costs if you lose the case. They also cover their own premiums if you lose, so there is nothing to pay.

However, if you win your case, the ATE premium and funder’s fees are taken out of the damages pot.

The difficulty with this case is the main thing we are seeking in this litigation is a declaration that the increase was unlawful and its reversal going forward. There will also be some monetary damages, which will be the overpayments made from the inception of the increase until the date of the judgement. It is this element of the award that the funders/insurers will be interested in and which you are likely to have to forfeit in order to obtain funding. However, as there are quite a few different factual scenarios with BOI borrowers affected, as we have outlined before, it will be very difficult to bring one big claim for everyone. For this reason, our barristers have recommended that we bring two or three test cases instead. The problem with this is that if we bring a test case and win, the damages won won’t be high enough to pay off the insurance and funding premiums which will become payable at that point.

So, we are, with our barristers, thinking through a number of options and hope to be able to present something to you very soon.

Some of the options would involve everyone paying a sum of money up front. This could be to cover litigation costs. It might also be to cover an up-front ATE insurance premium, which is a cheaper form of insurance premium but needs to be paid at the start.

This is a very unsual factual scenario and we are exploring the available options. Please do bear with us - but we are trying to engineer a solution with the lowest possible upfront cost for everyone.

I have paid the £500 for the second stage legal fees (plus the initial £180) I thought the £500 was required to show that one was supporting the next stage of the legal action and to give us access to the 'private' forum. From the private forum it appears that most have not paid up to the second part of the BOI legal fund (or is it that they have access to the forum because they are paid up members of the WB group?) and now Justin's latest post suggests the amount to be paid to start the legal action is not known. I am assuming my £500 is safe and will either be used as my contribution or returned if the legal group does not get off the ground? Apologies but am not sure really who to direct my query to?

Reply to the comment left by "Cheryl Larkin" at "04/04/2014 - 20:08":

Cheryl - in response to your query - we are holding your funds on our client account and it will not be utilised until you give us your consent to proceed.

Justin

LEGAL ACTION UPDATE:

This week we have started work on the next stage of the action. We have been liaising with our barrister who will be preparing the claim.

We have also prepared costs budgets which will be needed once the claim has started and also for the benefit of the insurers.

In order not to delay matters further, we would like everyone who is interested in proceeding with the action to contact us immediately. We will be asking for a commitment fee of £500 which will be utilised towards paying our fees and the barrister's fees to bring the action. We are hoping that you will be able to recoup this fee once we get insurance in place, but we do not want to delay matters further by waiting for this to be in place.

If you would like to proceed, please contact me at:
BOIClaim@lawdepartment.co.uk

Reply to the comment left by "Justin Selig" at "11/04/2014 - 14:41":

Hi Justin

I recommend you to write to and email ball those who have previously instructed you to ensure they receive this message. I also recommend you to post a deadline, after which the cost will increase. This will encourage people to join in quickly and they should also be encouraged to announce their involvement here in order to encourage others.

A few questions if I may please.

What will happen if not enough people join up. Will they be refunded or will the vcase go ahead regardless?

What cost protection is in place? Are members sending £500 in the full knowledge that's the maximum cost or are the signing up to no cap or control on costs?

This is VERY important to the success or failure of this campaign in my opinion.

The above were all known factors in phase two of the West Brom legal campaign and that is one of the key reasons that so much money was raised and all targets were obliterated in my humble opinion.
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Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "11/04/2014 - 14:51":

To Justim and Mark,
I already paid both sums (like Cheryll),I assume theres no more for me to do at the moment ?