Rankine v MBNA Europe Bank Ltd
Court of Appeal 26/10/07 [2007]EWCA Civ 1273
Mr Rankine, appeared on behalf of his wife in suing MBNA over two agreements
which she had made with the company. The issue was that the agreement stated that it could
be cancelled but this was not a cancellable agreement since there had been no
oral antecedent negotiations.
Mr Rankine claimed, that because there were no formal notices regarding the
cancellation rights, the agreement would be totally unenforceable under Section
127(4) [since repealed for agreements entered into after 06/06/2008}.
Reference was made to the Consumer Credit (Cancellation Notices and Copies
of Documents) Regulations 1983, which allows for such voluntary cancellation
rights (Reg.5(4)).
The Appeal Court decided that this was not a cancellable agreement, but they called it a registerable agreement, and distinguished the format requirements between the two types. They concluded that the mere fact that the agreement was voluntarily cancellable did not make it statutorily cancellable, and therefore s.127(4) could not apply.
For full report of this case click here. It is a downloadable MS Word 2000 document.