Here is something to encourage many of you in the ongoing bank penalty charges saga!
A judge has stopped Barclays bank taking any more penalty charges and interest from Nadine Fry who was claiming her charges back!
Judge Abrahams, at Luton County Court, has ordered Barclays to stop continuing to apply further penalty charges until the High Court test case finally settles all the legal issues involved.
Barclays said it will be entitled to reclaim any further charges from Nadine Fry should the test case be successful while Judge Abrahams also suspended Ms Fry's claim until the test case was resolved.
John Fry, who took the case to court on behalf of his daughter, told how he persuaded the judge to suspend any further penalty charges.
"I argued that a stay would have serious financial implications for my daughter as she would have to continue meeting interest payments on her debts, whereas the sum in question (£1,384) would have been sufficient to clear her debt entirely," he said.
Judge Abraham's decision is likely to be deeply disturbing to the UK's banks, in case other judges around the country take a similar line!
Can you imagine how the banks would feel if they a) weren't allowed to continue imposing penalty charges until the test case is resolved and b) they couldn't continue to make the huge amounts of money they do from penalty charges?
In the past year, tens of thousands of you have been winning refunds of overdraft penalty charges from your banks; so far this has cost the five main banks almost £400 million while Barclays has so far repaid £87milion of that.
As well as announcing the test case, the banks got a waiver from the Financial Services Authority (FSA) so that they can largely stop processing new claims against them until the legal issues are sorted out.
Likewise, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) decided to stop dealing with the thousands of similar complaints it has been receiving. The banks also asked the courts to suspend all existing legal actions against them for the time being.
However, any decisions on cases that are already before the courts have been left up to local judges to decide; hence Judge Abraham's decision.
Marc Gander of the Consumer Action Group said the Luton judge's decision was both just and encouraging:
"This is what should have been done from the start to maintain fair play. This waiver adopted by the FSA and the Ombudsman has been profoundly unjust because it is so one-sided," he said.
So, here's hoping that Judge Abraham's decision to stop banks continuing to impose penalty charges until the High Court case is settled, is the first of many more!
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