Often our clients find that upon terminating hire purchase agreements, either; their customer refuses to return the hired goods or, the goods are ‘missing’. Our clients are faced with a significant outstanding balance and no goods to hand to sell in order to reduce the deficit and balance the books.
Where our clients’ customers, or ex-customers as the case might be, retain goods to which they do not have title under the hire purchase agreement, now terminated, those customers are wrongfully interfering with the goods.
The legal mechanism by which we assist our clients in the recovery of their goods is known as delivery up. The relief is set out in the Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977. The Act provides that the court may either give (i) an order for delivery of the goods (as well as payment of consequential damages) or (ii) damages (being the value of the goods).
Applications for delivery up can be made in conjunction with proceedings for contractual damages or as urgent injunctive relief where the value of the goods is high or the risk to the goods is increased.
Last month, we issued urgent delivery up proceedings for one of our asset financing clients. The time between being instructed and having sealed proceedings in the High Court, took just 2 days. In less than a month, we had negotiated agreement by the Defendants to pay our client in full for three vehicles as well as indemnity costs.
The Banking & Finance team at Spratt Endicott is proud to be the trusted advisor to some of the largest secondary lenders and asset finance companies in the UK. In just the last 8 months, in asset finance matters alone we have helped our clients issue damages/delivery up claims with a cumulative value of over £950k.We would be pleased to assist you with any advice on terminating hire purchase agreements, asset finance litigation, delivery up and guarantees and indemnities.
https://www.se-law.co.uk/business/dispute-resolution/banking-and-financial-services-disputes/
