Car finance lawyers “smashed doors open” at Supreme Court

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Durkin: I can’t wait to get going

The solicitor behind the successful car finance commission claim at the Supreme Court earlier this month has said he believes his team “smashed the doors open” to future claims.

Kevin Durkin, director of HD Law, said the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of his client Marcus Johnson had given UK car drivers “a clear pathway to getting compensation through the courts”.

The Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal’s ruling in the case of Mr Johnson, whose claim was based on an unfair relationship between car dealer and buyer under Section 140A of the Consumer Credit Act 1974.

The Court of Appeal’s ruling in favour of car finance claims brought by Andrew Wrench and Amy and Carl Hopcraft, based on different arguments relating to whether dealers were in a fiduciary relationship, was overturned.

Mr Durkin said the ruling in Johnson was “great news” because buyers had got “the precedent they can rely on” and could “get on with instructing solicitors”.

He went on: “We smashed the doors open in terms of having a Supreme Court decision. The doors are open and will stay open because it’s a Supreme Court judgment.

“Now the hard work begins in getting people back the compensation they deserve and I can’t wait to get going.”

Mr Durkin was speaking in a Sentinel Legal podcast to Sam Ward, director of the law firm, which specialises in car finance claims.

Mr Durkin said that, before the Supreme Court judgment, it was “really difficult” to bring car finance commission claims, because “you had to go to small claims hearings” without a precedent and lenders were “going hard” to stop them.

Neither knew why the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) was waiting until October to launch its consultation on a car finance commission compensation scheme.

Mr Durkin said: “They’ve been looking at this for almost 10 years. It’s the lawyers who are getting on with it.”

He added that he did not know where the FCA got its figure of £950 for the average maximum amount of compensation car buyers would obtain from the scheme: “It looks on the low side to me.”

Mr Durkin said Mr Johnson could have represented himself at the county court but he would have lost because he would be “up against the experienced law firm” used by the lenders.

“He would have had to fill in the forms himself, do his own witness statements, quoted the law – he could have started his own law firm.”

Mr Durkin said he took issue with Lord Reed, who delivered the unanimous Supreme Court ruling, when he said that some of the advertising by claimant solicitors following the Court of Appeal ruling on car finance claims was premature.

“I understand what the Supreme Court was saying, but my view was that the Court of Appeal judgment was law and there was nothing wrong in following it and seeking to get clients who fall within that judgment.”

He described as “preposterous” comments by the lending industry that if the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the three claimants it would cause a “second credit crunch”.

The attitude of the lenders seemed to be “we’ve created this mess, but if you punish us for it, we’re going to crash the economy”.

The solicitor added: “There’s a bit of a threat there.”

• Both Kevin Durkin and Sam Ward will be speaking on our panel on the future of motor finance claims at our Claims Futures conference on 22 October in Manchester. Early bird tickets are available for another week.