Supreme Court of Canada:While maintaining a class action taken
against a bank which failed to disclose the conversion charges in its
cardholder agreement, applicable on transactions/purchases made by the credit
card and charge card holders in foreign currencies, the
Court has condemned the Bank to reimburse the conversion charges collected from
all cardholders. The Court said that Quebec’s Consumer
Protection Act (“CPA”) imposes various rules on the content and disclosure of
charges and fees in contracts extending variable credit. The evidence was clear
that from 1993 to 2003 there was no reference in the Bank's cardholder
agreement to the conversion charge because an “exchange rate determined by the
Bank” could not be understood as including such a charge. There was no
obligation for cardholders to pay the conversion charges as those payments by
cardholders were made in error
In this
case the petitioner bank made an offer on its credit and charge cards through
which the card holders/consumers could make purchases in foreign
currencies. An obligation was imposed on the consumers to pay a conversion
charge on such purchases. This conversion charge was
not disclosed in the cardholder agreements between 1993 and 2003. The
respondent, filed a class action against the bank for repayment of the
conversion charges so imposed and claimed that the conversion charges violated
the provisions of both CPA and Civil Code of Quebec (“CCQ”) since, class at
issue in this action included both consumer and non-consumer cardholders of
credit and charge cards. In appeal, the Bank argued that CPA was not applicable
on it and it does not owe any repayment of conversion charges.
Dismissing
the appeal, Court held that the trial Judge’s finding that conversion charge
was a separate fee rather than a component of the exchange rate, was a
determination of fact or mixed fact and law, and should not be disturbed. The
Bank violated s. 12 of CPA and should
reimburse the conversion charges collected from the consumer class members
between 1993 and 2003 under s. 272(c)
of CPA. Since, CPA does not apply to non-consumer class members, Bank must
instead restore the conversion charges u/CCQ. [Amex Bank of Canada v. Adams, 2014 SCC 56, decided on 19-09-2014]
No comments:
Post a Comment