Bank Charges Test Case - New Hearing Date

The Order of Mr Justice Andrew Smith in the High Court test case on bank charges brought by the Office of Fair Trading ("OFT") against seven banks and one building society has been published on the OFT website.

The order records the declarations set out in Smith J's judgment which was handed down on 24 April 2008 (see previous Law-Now analysis) which (in brief) were:

• that the OFT had succeeded in establishing that the banks' terms and conditions imposing charges on their customers for unauthorised overdrafts are subject to the test of fairness in the Unfair Terms and Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 ("UTCCR");

• that (largely) the bank's documents containing these terms were in "plain intelligible language" within the meaning of regulation 6(2) of UTCCR; and