One More Thing: Nurse in case against GE Money was misled, court finds

Stanton Fisher, a UK financial claims management company, is continuing to shake its fist at Irish banks over alleged mass mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI).

PPI, which must be one of the world’s most reviled insurance products, has been at the centre of a major scandal in the UK over allegations that banks there routinely mis-sold the policies to people who didn’t need them.

Stanton Fisher says a High Court court decision in Dublin this week, in an appeal case taken by a disgruntled customer against GE Money, strengthens the hand of Irish consumers who feel they were mis-sold PPI.

The case was originally taken in the District Court. The customer, a Phillipines-born nurse working in an Irish hospital, claimed he wasn’t told by GE that it made such large commissions from the sale of PPI to him, and that it also didn’t tell him that it was connected to the insurer.

He borrowed money from GE three times, including €20,000 which he used to build his mother a house back in the Phillipines, and a further €4,000 to travel there to see it. He lost in the District Court, because the judge found he was a competent individual and should have known what he was buying.

On appeal, however, the High Court has found that he was misled because GE didn’t disclose its relationship with the insurer.

“Stanton Fisher is looking closely at this important decision to ascertain the impact on other lenders,” said the claims management company, rather ominously. So there.