When "not illegal" is not the same as "legal"

Like thousands of others, I had put in a claim for repayment of bank charges on the grounds that they were unfair. This case was taken up by the Office of Fair Trading, albeit on a very narrow point of law and went to court.

The Supreme Court, previously known as the Law Lords, ruled in favour of the banks contesting the test case. The ruling was, in a nutshell, that the Office of Fair Trading had no jurisdication to challenge the fairness or otherwise of unauthorised overdraft charges, on a specific narrow point of a specific Act Of Parliament. In his ruling, one of the judges specifically highlighted the fact that this did not preclude further action being taken by the OFT or individual consumers on other points of law.

Driving to work this morning I heard that the OFT had decided not to follow further lines of attack against these charges. They have decided instead to try to persuade the banks to play fair with more transparency etc. In essence, this is a cop-out: the banks have rolled out the big guns and steam-rollered the little people once again. The cynic in me wonders what deal has been done between the banks and the suits at the OFT.

What really annoyed me was the way that this reported on BBC Radio 4: they said that the Supreme Court had ruled that the "charges were legal". This was not what happened. The court case was contested on a particular point of law. On this point, the courts agreed with the banks. But that's it! They didn't say that on all other points the charges were lawful: these points were not included in the court case. The BBC should know better.

My bank has written to me and quoted the same line, basically that they won the court case and the charges are legal. This will no doubt deter 90+% of all claimants. I'm pretty sure it won't deter me.

I wonder if the banks will contest my claim in court if raised on another point of law. I suspect that they will not, for the same reason that they didn't to many of the original claims made many moons ago: they will not want to have the claim heard and thus create a legal precedent.

All I need now is to find another point of law on which to challenge these unfair charges.