The Sheriff Appeal Court has refused permission to appeal in a case involving a conditional sale agreement. Mr G entered into a conditional sale agreement with Moneybarn No.1 Ltd in June 2023 to buy a car. Title would pass to him once all instalments were paid. When Mr G defaulted and the lender served a default notice, Mr G said the contract was “defective and unenforceable” because the lender had not disclosed the amount of commission awarded.
The sheriff found the pleadings lack specification and relevance, and had not applied to set aside the contract under s140B CCA, and that the Hopcraft judgment did not provide any support to Mr G’s argument given that he had not identified who had received commission from whom, when or why the relationship was unfair.
Mr G appealed, saying the sheriff should have considered the defence that Hopcraft had established. On appeal, it was held that there was nothing in Mr G’s pleadings that set out a defence that the Hopcraft decision might have justified – that judgment was made on the specifics of the case and, moreover, did not decide that the contract in question was cancelled, void or otherwise unenforceable. So Mr G had failed to identify how the sheriff’s decision was wrong in law and was not allowed to appeal.