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Bill vs. Royal Bank of Scotland

A long running saga. The claim was issued on 2 March 2007. After the filing of the usual Allocation Questionnaire, Truro County Court put the claim on stay for a month "so that the parties could attempt to reach a settlement". This was the usual tactic of the court at this time – anything other than actually get on and do the job that we had paid them to do. RBS did not settle, so finally the court set a hearing date of 23 August. Then the test case was announced and Truro Court put this claim on stay just 9 days before the scheduled hearing.

I submitted an application to have the stay lifted. Much to my surprise, RBS solicitors (Cobbetts) wrote a letter of support saying that they felt that the test case was not relevant to this claim. The court then had little option but to lift the stay. A new court hearing date was set for 13 December.

Then the judge suddenly decided he was going to dig out the papers and have another look at them. He made an order on 29 October saying that he was reconsidering the stay and that we should make representations by 12 November. I submitted essentially the same papers as before. This time Cobbetts sent in a different letter. In essence, the letter said, "If we win the test case, we will argue that the same principles apply to business accounts; if we lose the test case, we will argue that the principles are different." A cunning ploy worthy of Baldrick! So the judge then revoked his previous order and imposed another stay on 20 November.

On 23 November, I had a phone call from Cobbetts offering to settle the claim. Within a few days, they had sent a cheque for the full amount including interest from March to November at 8%.

Much rejoicing!

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Published and promoted by Bob Egerton, TR2 4RS