All that gas

The armoury available to the debtor whose creditor goes way over the top has been extended. The Administration of Justice Act 1970, s 40 makes it a criminal offence to harass a debtor and the Malicious Communications Act 1988 (MCA 1988) criminalises the sending of a threatening letter if its purpose is to cause distress or anxiety to the recipient.

Now let the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 take a revived bow. Its civil arm was used in Ferguson v British Gas Trading Ltd [2009] EWCA Civ 46, [2009] All ER (D) 80 (Feb) by the claimant who sought not an injunction but £10,000 in damages for distress and anxiety and expenses in dealing with the defendant. The claimant left British Gas as a customer and went elsewhere.

Thereafter over a period of at least five months she received letter after letter and threat after threat from British Gas to cut off her supply, start legal proceedings against her and report her to credit reference agencies—all without justification. Telephone calls to British Gas were to no avail and mainly her letters to them received no response. She says she was brought to a considerable state of anxiety. British Gas appealed the dismissal of its application to strike her out on the basis that her particulars of claim disclosed no reasonable ground of claim. The Court of Appeal delivered a battering as it dismissed the appeal. It rejected the argument that the conduct of British Gas was not capable of amounting to harassment. The course of conduct had to be grave and the only difference between the tort and the criminal arm of MCA 1988 was as to the standard of proof required. But it was strongly arguable that the conduct relied on by the claimant was “oppressive” and “unacceptable” and so constituted harassment. The suggestion that the claimant should not have taken seriously the correspondence from British Gas because it was computer generated was given short shrift. And the incompletely argued point that there could be no corporate liability for mistakes made either by the personnel responsible for its computerised debt recovery system or by the personnel responsible for programming and operating it was given a provisional thumbs well down. Debt collection agencies beware.