{"id":669261,"date":"2026-07-02T05:46:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T05:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/669261\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T05:46:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T05:46:22","slug":"tip-of-the-iceberg-court-of-appeal-landmark-ruling-opens-way-to-thousands-of-motor-finance-claims-to-be-grouped-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/669261\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Tip of the iceberg’: Court of Appeal landmark ruling opens way to thousands of motor finance claims to be grouped together"},"content":{"rendered":"

Claimant lawyers have hailed what they call a landmark victory after appeal judges allowed mis-sold car finance cases to be grouped together as one class action.\u00a0The Court of Appeal today upheld the High Court\u2019s decision<\/a> that thousands of claims can be conveniently dealt with under eight \u2018omnibus\u2019 claim forms.<\/p>\n

More than 5,000 claimants served a single, generic particulars of claims against eight motor finance companies alleging they failed to make sufficient disclosure of commission arrangements with car dealers.<\/p>\n

The decision was about procedure rather than liability. If the court were to allow fact-sensitive claims to be managed collectively, this would make it easier for lawyers to bring these cases and potentially attract more clients to join.<\/p>\n

The Financial Conduct Authority has suggested that people eligible to claim for mis-sold motor finance should use its own redress scheme, but the timescale for receiving compensation is still unclear and the scheme faces a legal challenge from both lenders and the claimant lobby.<\/p>\n

In Black Horse Limited v Angel & Ors<\/a>, Lord Justice Coulson said the court had to have regard to the ‘commercial reality’ that individual claimants would be less able to bring separate proceedings and would suffer from the imbalance of financial power compared to the defendants.<\/p>\n

He added: \u2018It also suits the defendants for there to be separate claims because the stronger claims can be settled and the less strong claims can be run into the ground.<\/p>\n

\u2018The most practical way in which the court can achieve at least a measure of justice for the claimants in this case is by efficiently case-managing their claims to a convenient disposal. The defendants\u2019 opposition to that outcome is commercially understandable, but\u2026 ultimately unrealistic.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"Sir<\/p>\n

The judge said the case had achieved \u2018almost nothing\u2019 in three and a half years except to run up \u2018extravagant\u2019 costs. The claimants\u2019 costs of the appeal alone were \u00a31.3m, a figure which was likely to be similar if not more for the defendants. Such a level of costs was \u2018insupportable\u2019, particularly given that the individual claims in this case were likely to be worth around \u00a31,000 each.<\/p>\n

Remitting the matter to Birmingham County Court for further directions, Coulson added he was \u2018acutely aware\u2019 that these claims were the tip of an iceberg, and that allowing such multi-claimant claims would mean a huge increase in workload.<\/p>\n

North west firm Barings Law, which brought claims and represented the respondents in the appeal, said the ‘landmark ruling’\u00a0paves the way for additional claims against lenders.<\/p>\n

Robert Whitehead, chairman of Barings Law, said: \u2018This ruling is a step towards securing true justice for millions of drivers who were mis-sold car finance over many years.\u00a0Those consumers have been left waiting while lenders challenged every decision made by the regulator and the courts. Today\u2019s judgment finally brings certainty and allows these claims to continue progressing through the courts as they always should have done.’<\/p>\n

The firm has announced a new claims model which pledges that motorists who join will receive 100% of any damages recovered in a successful claim, with no deductions for legal fees.<\/p>\n

Barings said its costs will be limited to whatever contribution the losing party pays towards its fees and, if the firm\u2019s costs are higher than that, it will waive the difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Claimant lawyers have hailed what they call a landmark victory after appeal judges allowed mis-sold car finance cases…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-669261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}