My boat has been repossessed and I've also been handed the mortgage to pay

[duncan1859]

Just want to say I haven't gone quiet, but we are at a rather critical stage and so don't feel able to add anything else until the lawyers have done their talking. As soon as there is any definitive news, I will post on this thread.

I am, however, really grateful to all of the boat owners who have posted - even the critical ones - you have helped me in a number of ways. I only wish I had known then what i know now when: 1/ I was a green landlubber buying my first boat through a crooked dealer and 2/ when I decided against spending the £200 fare to London and a day off work to attend court for a boat I'd already lost to my ex and was worth hardly anything (relatively speaking).

My current course of action (that I can mention) is to defend the Statutory Demand served against me for the (£27500 ish that the defaulting borrower owes them); to do this, the Bank has to either accept that it does not wish to enforce the High Court judgement against me (or the defendant) and release me from this, or I have to overturn this judgement.

As the stakes have now been raised to £27500 (and rising with interest) I now have every incentive to take this back to the High Court with appropriate representation.

One thing's for sure: the only way I'll be on the water this summer is on my kayak with a bass rod - which is where I'll be tonight

 

[PaulGooch]

Do keep us informed, as and when you can. I'm sure everyone here wishes you the best of luck.

 

[petem]

Yep good luck and please report back. interesting that you bought the boat from a dealer. Hopefully your legal advisers or you appreciate the difference between stock and brokerage boats.

Pete

 

[PaulGooch]

Yep good luck and please report back. interesting that you bought the boat from a dealer. Hopefully your legal advisers or you appreciate the difference between stock and brokerage boats.

Pete

Dealer's gone skint Pete.

 

[timbartlett]

Just a thought ...
The bank must know who they lent the money to.
And they must know that it wasn't the OP.
And if the court gained the impression that the OP was the one who had defaulted on the loan, that must be because the Bank misled it.
Isn't it a fairly serious criminal offence to make a misrepresentation with the intention of causing another to suffer loss?
And isn't it another serious crime to mislead a court of law?

Anyone?

 

[DAKA]

Seeing as the boat belongs to the ex, has anyone explained why she doesnt get the bill

sounds like a result to me

 

[zarathustra]

The legal system is disgusting and is clearly weighted against the ordinary man. It is obvious that the banks get a favourable and unfair result at the enormous cost to an individual. The judge should no regard to you or any morale fibre when he made that decision. It is pure gansterism and theft. You have been wronged badly here, the judge saw the banks were at a loss and you were the easy target. It is like a mafia system. There is no way whatsoever that the bank should be entitled to the mortgage AND the boat, it should be either/or, and of course it should only be the previous owner who signed the morgage who should have to pay. I can imagine how you are feeling, I have little respect for the legal system or the banks, and judgements like this only reinforce how disgusting they are and how they are out to take advantage of the public.

I do hope you have success in fighting this, it really is disgusting that they can take the boat and still expect to be paid the mortgage on it. I hope you refuse to give them a single penny, and they shouldn't get any money back from either you or the previous owner while they have the boat.

Best of luck and I hope you find a way out of this mess.

 

[jfm]

What a load of ignorant bollox

The judge should no regard to you

Indeed, becuase he was a no-show. He didn't bother to turn up to the court or enter any defence. If he had, the judge would have shown him much regard

There is no way whatsoever that the bank should be entitled to the mortgage AND the boat, it should be either/or ...

The bank are not entitled to both, and the judge never said they were. That has been confirmed in this thread

 

[Observer]

BTW, as there seem to be contradictory ideas about whether Part 1 registration is required or not, http://www.lombard.co.uk/assets/marine/powerboats/your-questions-answered.aspx might help:-

No contradiction but you need to read a little between the lines.

Must I register the boat?
Unless you keep your vessel outside UK waters, or we provide a particularly large level of finance, we do not normally require the boat to be fully British registered under Part 1 of the Merchant Shipping Act.

What this means, I believe, is:

a loan below a certain threshold (whatever "a particularly large level of finance" means) will be on a (unsecured) personal loan, so no registration, whether Part I or SSR, needed.

if a a loan is above the threshold, then security (marine mortgage) is required and LNC will insist on Part I registration.

It does not say that LNC takes unregistered security (i.e. a mortgage on an unregisterd vessel). It is POSSIBLE they do so but, I think, highly unlikely, or only for a short period (e.g. pending completion of Part I registration).

 

[realslimshady]

I hate that-like reading a Grisham novel and finding the last chapter missing what happened? what happened?

 

[Marsupial]

Just a thought ...
The bank must know who they lent the money to.
And they must know that it wasn't the OP.
And if the court gained the impression that the OP was the one who had defaulted on the loan, that must be because the Bank misled it.
Isn't it a fairly serious criminal offence to make a misrepresentation with the intention of causing another to suffer loss?
And isn't it another serious crime to mislead a court of law?

Anyone?

Those are good thoughts and I have used similar reasoning (in a different type of case) to prove that a Plaintiff was using the court system deceptively and maliciously to further their own ends; and was successful. It all depends on the trail of evidence and what of what they had and could be proven to have had at the time that has been omitted from various hearings – thus perverting the court. (if that makes sense) As soon as it was shown that there was no case to answer things moved swiftly. Mind you I did attend all the hearings and not appearing may turn out to be a weakness for this type of defence; who knows?

But on the basis of what we have in this thread it seems like a good approach.

 

[Observer]

Just a thought ...
The bank must know who they lent the money to.
And they must know that it wasn't the OP.
And if the court gained the impression that the OP was the one who had defaulted on the loan, that must be because the Bank misled it.
Isn't it a fairly serious criminal offence to make a misrepresentation with the intention of causing another to suffer loss?
And isn't it another serious crime to mislead a court of law?

Anyone?

I suspect this was a simple clerical/drafting error (sloppy but not criminal) in the particulars of claim that wasn't picked up. It is highly probable that the bank had taken proceedings against the original borrower as well as the subsequent purchaser (the OP), so each was a "defendant", but in different cases. It's not clear that the court was misled. In the circumstances, the outcome would have been what it was anyway (i.e. judgement for possession in favour of the bank unless the full debt secured by the charge on the boat is paid).

Even if the court (or anyone) was misled (which I doubt), it's highly unlikely that the bank (or their solicitors/barristers) had that objective. They had no need to. Deliberately misleading the the court is a serious offence - perversion of the course of justice, which I think carries max life sentence, and for a solicitor or barrister (who, remember, is an "officer of the court") grounds for professional castration. The probability that is what happened in a case like this is remote to non-existent.

 

[Dave_Snelson]

I bought an unregistered panther sportscruiser in 2006 for £17500. did an HPI check and a search of the small ships regster. All clear.

In 2009, the bank of scotland contacted me to say they have a marine mortgage on the boat. I challenged this with my searches o they took the matter to the high court and won. I did my own defence as I felt the boat wasn't worth the price of QC's.

I presumed that if they won they would be entitled to the boat, but that is not all. The judge has ruled that the entire mortgage and interest is now my liability. The previous owner who did not mention the mrtgage, now owes £27500 and this debt has been passed to me. So I have lost the boat and the cheat who ripped me off is sitting pretty 10 miles away while I now have to pay his debt. The bank have started bankruptcy proceedings.

Has this kind of thing happened to anyone else?

Hi Duncan - I have dropped in on this at a late stage (too busy at work) but something troubles my simple mind. How can the loan be assigned to you? Did you ask them to provide you copies of the loan agreement - with your signature on it? I think the bank can repossess the boat but I am sure they cannot (and a court cannot) arbitrarily assign a loan to you.

Best of luck
Dave

 

[jfm]

Hi Duncan - I have dropped in on this at a late stage (too busy at work) but something troubles my simple mind. How can the loan be assigned to you? Did you ask them to provide you copies of the loan agreement - with your signature on it? I think the bank can repossess the boat but I am sure they cannot (and a court cannot) arbitrarily assign a loan to you.

Best of luck
Dave

Dave, you need to read the thread. The loan was not "assigned" to Duncan, nor could it be in these circumstances. Duncan was mistaken and cleared that up 2/3rds way through this thread

I'm amazed such a misconception can still have legs in this thread. And it's being repeated often enough that some folks might even believe it or be worried about it. You can never be liable to repay someone else's loan to a bank just because you bought something off them. The thing you bought might be pledged to a bank, and you need to be careful of that, but that's different

 

[timbartlett]

I suspect this was a simple clerical/drafting error (sloppy but not criminal) in the particulars of claim that wasn't picked up.

I'm inclined to agree. But drafting the particulars of claim is not the first step in the process of recovering a debt, nor do cases go from filing particulars of claim to judgement in the blink of an eye.

I cannot imagine that there were not plenty of opportunities for someone to realise that a mistake had been made, and to put it right before it got to court.

The trouble is that once someone tries to cover up a minor cock-up by lying rather than by putting it right, the lie tends to snowball. Unlike a snowball, however, it gets bigger as it rolls upwards, as successive layers of management try to "protect" their staff.

Eventually (and I have seen this happen) you end up with Chief Execs jeopardising their six-figure salaries by telling bare-faced lies because some £15k pro rata part-time clerk didn't like to admit the possibility that she might have transcribed something wrong.

 

[duncan1859]

We've settled!

I've finally heard from my solicitor that the Bank's lawyers have been instructed not to pursue me for the defaulting borrower's debt. i just wanted to say thank you once again to everyone who commented and helped me with this.

in order to tie up loose ends for those who remember this thread I have jotted down a couple of bits below.

1. The defaulting borrower's loan was for £23k and so came under the consumer credit act making the mortgage paperwork (in our view) worthless. Therefore they had no right to the boat in the first place. This was going to have to be put to the test back in the Admiralty court but there was something more.

2. My amatureish defence letter sent to the Court and the Bank's solicitors was originally classed by the bank's solicitors as no defence at all. However, when I checked with the Court, they told me (5 weeks after I wrote to them) that they did not open my letter until after the case but they did consider it to be a defence that should have been dealt with. The Bank's solicitors acknowledged receipt of this letter before the date of the High Court hearing and so were duty bound to bring it to the attention of the judge. They said, in correspondence with my solicitor, that they had done so and yet the Court denied any knowledge of my letter. this embarrassing situation for the Bank's lawyers I believe has mede them less than keen to return to the High court and admit that they behaved badly.

3. The 'Shizelle' ruling was the Bank's key weapon but fortunately dodgy loan paperwork trumps even Queen's Bench High Court judgements.

Am now waiting for my legal bill which although expensive, will be considerably less than the £27.5k statutory demand.

Thanks again. Duncan

 

[nyx2k]

thanks for returning and giving us the info .
its so nice to hea the outcome

 

[Major Catastrophe]

Thank you for the update and I think that many of us have learned a salutary lesson.

 

[Kipper]

Not a bad result I suppose, what happened with the demand for the boat?

 

[timbartlett]

I've finally heard from my solicitor that the Bank's lawyers have been instructed not to pursue me for the defaulting borrower's debt. i just wanted to say thank you once again to everyone who commented and helped me with this.

Congratulations.
That's brilliant.



(No chance of getting the bank to cough up for your legal bill, I suppose? Or as it was the bank that started the action against you, you might find that it's covered on your home and contents insurance)