15:24 PM, 31st January 2014, About 11 years ago
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History to date
100 affected BoI borrowers each paid £150 plus VAT into an initial legal fees fighting fund and instructed Justin Selig of The Law Department to obtain Counsels opinion on the merits of our case.
Consensus of legal opinions was that regulators should fight the case on several bases including Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations.
Detailed complaint letters were prepared by The Law Department with assistance of Counsel and submitted to the OFT, FOS and the FCA.
The OFT immediately passed their case over to the FCA.
The FCA sought our permission to send our complaint to the Bank of Ireland on the understanding that we would be copied into their response. BoI employed a QC to respond to the FCA and our legal team duly received a copy which was “wishy washy” to say the least. Nevertheless, the FCA felt they had concluded their duties and didn’t consider our case any further.
The FOS are still prevaricating after 10 months!
The complexities of the case lead us to believe, at the time, that it was unlikely that we would be able to raise sufficient funds to progress to Court. Therefore, fundraising was suspended whilst we re-grouped to consider our options. Nevertheless, the PR battle has progressed well on the back of a very similar case affecting borrowers of the West Brom Mortgage Company. A few hundred additional borrowers have completed an “Expression of Interest” form in respect of taking legal action against the Bank of Ireland since the fundraising was suspended. These people have paid nothing.
Moving forward
Those members who paid fees into the legal action fund have been briefed on considerable work undertaken by The Law Department, Counsel and even a QC, all of which have been working without payment since fundraising was suspended. Given the success of the fundraising for legal action against the West Brom Mortgage Company and the advice and strategies agreed between the enhanced legal team we are now far more confident that funds will be raised and that privately funded litigation will be successful.
To obtain a copy of the briefing which was sent to clients who instructed The Law Department, so that you can make a decision of whether to be a party to ongoing legal action, will require you to instruct The Law Department and make an initial payment of £150 plus VAT (i.e. £180 in total).
Payment can be made my cheque payable to “The Law Department Client Account” or by electronic transfer to:
Account Name: The Law Department Client Account
Account Number: 06658997
Sort Code: 12 24 82.
Reference: your full name
To instruct The Law Department you will also need to complete and return a letter of instruction and return it with the following documentation:-
On receipt of the above you will receive further details of advice and strategies. You will then be given the option of whether to commit to litigation or not.
Proceeding to litigation
This will require 150 people to each pay an additional £500 into The Law Department client account as a gesture of commitment and for each affected borrower to agree to a further potential liability of £1,000 if/when litigation commences. If the number of instructions is greater than 150 then the liability will fall pro-rata, for example, if there are 300 instructions the additional potential liability will halve.
If legal action is aborted funds paid will be refunded less costs shared pro-rata.
Our legal team are confident of a positive outcome if sufficient funds can be raised/pledged to commit to further legal action.
Secure Forum
Members who agree to proceed to litigation on the above terms will be granted access to a highly secure internet forum. The forum operates on the same technology as electronic banking, is hidden from search engines and has several additional layers of security. The purpose of this forum will be to share confidential, commercially sensitive and legally privileged strategies and for members to ask questions, either via private messages or via the secure forum where Q&A’s are likely to be of interest to all members. The private messaging service will also enable members to communicate in confidence, and securely, between themselves, e.g. to swap telephone numbers.
To-Do List – 4 simple steps
1) Tell everybody you know to support the marketing campaign (details below)
2) Share this post via your social networks (see icons at the bottom of this page)
3) If you use Twitter please re-tweet these Tweets…
Bank of Ireland Tracker Rate Legal Campaign Fundraising re-launched – http://t.co/UX7MupgIqr #landlords #mortgagemugging cc @MPDavidMorris
— Mark Alexander (@iAmALandlord) January 31, 2014
Want to know what's happenening with the Bank of Ireland Tracker Rate Legal Campaign? – http://t.co/UX7MupgIqr #mortgagemugging #mortgages
— Mark Alexander (@iAmALandlord) February 1, 2014
4) Marketing
The success of our campaigns are highly dependent upon quality marketing including PR and meeting with centres of influence. Property118 operates a “not for profit” business model and is, therefore, totally reliant of donations to fund marketing and other activities such as the creation and ongoing hosting our the above mentioned secure forum. Whether you are immediately affected by a tracker rate hike or not, it is in your interests to support the Property118 marketing fund to raise awareness of important issues which could affect all landlords and to discourage lenders which YOU have tracker rate mortgages with from hiking your tracker rate margins. For further details please CLICK HERE.
All comments via the existing Bank of Ireland discussion thread please CLICK HERE
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