Consumer Protection Litigation
Our lawyers have extensive experience in consumer protection litigation, mostly aquired from assisting and representing bank institutions in more than 2,500 court cases concerning allegedly abusive clauses in loan agreements concluded with retail clients (including class-action type litigation), restructuring of entire loan agreements portfolios to remove allegedly abusive provisions, as well as court challenges against sanctions applied by the national consumer protection authority.
Our Services
representation to companies active in various industries (FMCG, telecom, pharma, IT&C etc) in consumer protection litigation cases against the National Authority for Consumers’ Protection (ANPC).
representation as regards challenges brought with respect to clauses concerning the currency of the loan reimbursement; the credit application fee and the loan agreement service fee; the additional service fee for credit rescheduling; the risk management fee; the bank’s right to adjust the current interest rate by reference to 6M Euribor or 6M Libor the bank’s right to declare the credit as outstanding if the borrower fails to comply with any of its obligations to the lender within the terms and under the conditions provided in the loan agreement; clauses on jurisdiction etc.
Client Highlights
A medium-size bank: court assistance in disputes challenging the allegedly abusive clauses in the credit agreements with retail clients, regarding the contract mechanism for adjusting the interest rate by reference to 6M Euribor, the risk management fee, as well as a consumer action challenging the loan agreement provisions related to the interest rate applicable for the bank’s employees.
One of the major Romanian banks: court representation in more than 1,300 initiated by retail clients
One of the major Romanian banks: court representation in more than 1,300 initiated by retail clients, mainly based on Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts, EUCJ’s rulings and on domestic Law No. 193/2000 on unfair clauses in contracts concluded between professional entities and consumers. Our firm assists and represents the client in all these varied types of case files, which are subject to different procedural rules under the Civil Procedure Code. We also represented the bank at the European Court of Justice, with a favourable decision for our client.
One of the oldest and major Romanian banks: representation in disputes challenging the allegedly abusive clauses in the loan agreements concerning the credit application fee and the loan agreement service fee.
A nationwide bank: court representation with a considerable success rate in more than 800 court cases against the Bank’s retail clients, as well as in several cases against ANPC, regarding the challenge as abusive of various provisions in the loan agreements concluded by the retail clients with the Bank: the currency of the loan reimbursement, the adjustment of the interest rate, bank’s possibility to declare the credit as outstanding if the borrower fails to comply with any of its contractual obligations, penalties, the selection of the insurer. Out of the 800 cases, 4 were class actions involving more than 400 individual claimants challenging the bank credits granted in CHF, whereby our lawyers obtained favourable final court decisions at the High Court of Cassation and Justice.
A nationwide bank: assistance and representation against one of the bank’s corporate clients that filed various court claims for the annulment of a credit agreement concluded with the bank and the absolute nullity of the assignment of the receivable arising from the credit agreement. The assistance required an extensive legal assessment on the impact of the receivables’ assignments towards foreign entities operating within bank system and of potential effects on the ongoing credit agreements.
A multinational beverage corporation: legal assistance and successful representation in challenging a fine imposed by ANPC, as well as challenging the sanction to remove a certain product from the market, further to allegations from ANPC related to unfair practices (misleading marketing of product).
An international hypermarket chain: legal assistance and representation in litigations having as object the challenging of various sanctions applied by the inspectors of ANPC, referring to allegations related to: (i) unfair practices; (ii) lack of translations in Romanian of different information related to the products; (iii) marketing of products with non-compliant characteristics; (iv) products with incomplete identification would have been marketed, as well as challenging the complementary sanction, to remove certain products from the market.
A multinational company operating a fast-food restaurant chain: legal assistance and representation in challenging a fine imposed by ANPC, as well as challenging the complementary sanction to stop selling ice products.
A multinational telecom company: court assistance in disputes against ANPC in relation to: (i) the cancellation of an administrative fine imposed by authority for alleged unfair practice, as defined, prohibited and sanctioned under the Law No. 363/2007 on the unfair traders' practices in relation to consumers; (ii) the cancellation and, respectively, suspension of authority’s order for corrective measures subsequently imposed to the client.