West Bromwich Building Society Tracker Margins Legal Action

Reply to the comment left by "stuart marshall" at "20/11/2013 - 20:34":

I believe when the Tracker was sold it was meant to be EXACTLY what we all took it to be - and that WB are now just chancing their arm having employed some crooked lawyer or another to invent a meaning for a clause in the booklet. If we get side tracked into miss selling or misrepresentation then we are agreeing that the clause was there and meant then what they are saying it now means - NOT SO. We were not mislead nor was a product mis-sold - it was what it was - and what it still is! a LIFETIME TRACKER - now WB are trying to wriggle out of what I believe to be a legally binding contract by inventing meanings that were not there and were not meant at the time. The issue is they are trying to break a contract!!! (in my opinion) We (or at the very least our counsel) need to be clear what it is we are saying and what it is we are fighting!

Reply to the comment left by "Denise Doms" at "20/11/2013 - 20:56":

Hi Denise - I agree. I mean Miss sold in the sense that we all took out Lifetime Trackers and if WBBS had any thoughts that this was 'not' a Lifetime Tracker and rather a Standard Variable Rate Product (which as we all know is what they are trying to Pay a Huge Fee to a Barrister to tell them what they want to hear), then they have misled/miss sold the product from Day 1.

Reply to the comment left by "stuart marshall" at "20/11/2013 - 21:06":

Hi Stuart, funnily enough I was JUST going to post a reply which echoed your words to Denise, as I think (and forgive me for saying this, Denise, it's in no way meant to be disrespectful of your opinion) there was a bit of muddying between miss-sold/miss-selling and 'breach of contract'. One is KIND of the result of the other, if that makes sense. The 'breach of contract' is one of the same thing, in effect, as they are defying the very title of the product, which was for the 'life' of the mortgage - or supposed to be. So the fact that WBBS have changed it, and are applying and increase, means the the original title and therefore our understanding, has now BEEN breached.
I hope my interjection here helps, rather than hinders or confuses. I just don't want things to become unclear over time, or we lose the very essence of what we're fighting!

Hi
I too am affected by this outragous hike in WB rates and have been trying to find the answers to a few questions - perhaps someone can help? I have tried to digest the 150 + pages - but a huge amount to take in!
I am so grateful for all the hard work so many of you, especially Mark, have put into this fight.

- If you have numerous mortgages with West Bromwich; why pay £240 multiplied by x number? Surely if a judgement over one mortgage is successful, it will automatically apply to all the others under that persons name? Any thoughts?
-Further more- worse case scenario; what if the case is lost? Does the £240.00/mortgage cover all the court costs? Are we likely to be liable to even more costs?

Denise/Dean to Stop getting the information twice. Open the New comment notification email and at the bottom of the page click the option to stop receiving comments. Each time you make a comment this will be reinstate so you will again receive two emails just repeat process.

SERIOUS LEGAL ISSUE

I am very confident that we can demonstrate to a Court of Law that condition 5 of the West Brom mortgage conditions relates only to Standard Variable Rate mortgages.

We all know that we have overwhelming and ever growing evidence in that regard and feel confident of winning that legal battle subject to raising the necessary funds to take the case to Court.

HOWEVER, based on feedback from the first barrister I am no longer confident the same applies to conditions 15 and 15.1 of the Mortgage Conditions which allow West Brom to call in their mortgage within 28 days.

You are not going to want to hear some of what follows any more than I want to break this news.

I said very early on into this thread that all mortgages have this condition ..... and they do. However, the norm for but to let mortgages is that is that the Mortgage Conditions also state the basis upon which the loan can be called in. West Brom have no such conditions. Maybe this was an error in omission on their part, maybe it was intentional, who knows? The bottom line is that none of us, including me, have paid much respect to conditions 15 and 15.1 because we have held a common belief that West Brom are unable to use these conditions unless we are in default. Our barrister has now pointed out this error of judgement on our part. Therefore, in theory, West Brom could call in one or more loans just because they decide they decide to do that and it seems we can't stop them because we all signed to accept those conditions. There is nothing to prevent them being selective as the vast majority of us have no consumer protection. It is quite normal for commercial overdraft facilities to be able to be called in on demand but not certainly not buy to let mortgages.

As you are aware, we are taking advice from a QC now to provide us with a backup argument for the rate rise in the unlikely event of us being unable to convince a judge that condition 5 is not relevant to our tracker rate mortgages. That's all fine but what if the West Brom decide to call in the loans? We could win the battle and lose the war!

This is where we need advice from a third barrister who specialises in professional negligence. Thankfully this will cost us nothing. This will act as be a safety net for some of us if we win the arguments about the rate rise and West Brom subsequently decide to call in our loans. Conditions 15 and 15.1 are incredibly unusual in their structure and we need to prove that. Whether the conditions are fair or not may not come into the matter for those of us who are not consumers. Therefore, we may need to sue our professional advisers for not pointing out the importance and unusual nature of these mortgage conditions to us, i.e. negligence. That's not good enough on it's own though because some of us didn't take any professional advice. We need more legal arguments to get conditions 15 and 15.1 ruled by a judge to be unenforceable unless we are in default, i.e. just like other BTL mortgages. We need to rely on our legal team to achieve this before we progress to the next state in my opinion.

I suspect the likelihood of West Brom actually taking this action and calling in loans is very small, especially as many of the loans are in negative equity and could result in unrecoverable losses. Perversely though, we could see them call in the loans where LTV's are low enough to be certain of full recovery even in a forced sale situation, leaving only those those with negative equity untouched until such time as property values increase. They may not have to treat us fairly because we are not consumers according to the regulators, this needs looking into again as I feel sure the FCA principles of "treating customers fairly" applies to all financial services companies, whether the services are provided to consumers or businesses. If that wasn't the case, why did the FCA get involved in the interest rate swaps mis-selling scandal? They were all sold by banks to businesses?

Theoretically at least, it appears at face value that West Brom can pick and choose which loans they want to call in based on conditions 15 and 15.1. This is NOT good news!

Based on the above I have asked Justin to liaise further with the two barristers and the QC before providing us with the complaints template to the FOS and the letter template for those of us who instructed our own solicitors.

I am not comfortable with the prospects of winning the battle against the rate increase only to find that some of us become casualties of war due to our mortgages being called in, especially as some of us have no recourse to negligence claims against professional advisers.

I still believe that all will come good, but right now I don't know how it will come good or what any of us can do.

Justin is aware of the above.
.

Mark - Where is 15 & 15.1 please. All my signed paperwork stops at 13 and then signed by us.

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "20/11/2013 - 22:31":

Oh dear but let's wait upon Justin's advice. Doubtless you don't want to have 100's of questions fired at you pending this so I post now for Justin to review in his own time.
1/. If the small print about the rate rise is wrong due to the Latin law why not the same re calling in the loan?
2/ If I get 28 day notice can I stall etc through getting them to provide court order etc? Not many folk can write a big cheque inside 28 days. If I was targeted I would have to sell the property - positive equity - but this won't complete inside 28 days in a million years.
3/. Or can WBBS snatch the property. Can't see much point as they won't sell it any quicker than I could.

If WBBS think they can do this I merely observe that this is what they will likely do thus scotching the confidential settlement thread.

FUNDING

Further to my last post, I would be happy to make it public that I would also pledge £1,000 to the legal action fund if 99 others do the same. When we get to 100 we all then make the payment to Justin's client account, assuming of course we either resolve the issues in my above post or agree that we will be taking a risk which we are confortable with.

I'm really pleased to hear that so many of you would be willing to pay more. However, you also need to know that if the case goes to Court, win or lose we will never get that money back, other than through the savings we stand to make by successfully proving that West Brom can't increase our mortgages. This is because the funds raised will pay for the legal insurance if we win or our own legal teams costs if we lose. We cannot reclaim the legal fees premium even if we win. The law changed on that in April this year.

A further point is that I don't think we should make a claim against solicitors or mortgage advisers for compensation for the rate increase unless we lose a case against West Brom. We can't have it both ways, i.e. we can't claim that West Brom's condition 5 is not relevant in our Court case against them and then sue our professional advisers for not telling us it was relevant unless we lose the case against West Brom and it is proven that clause 5 was relevant.
.

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "20/11/2013 - 22:31":

Mark. The paragraph that starts as you are aware does not read correctly I think ?