The most loathsome of these – purely by the scale of its operations – is Anexo, a publicly listed company - https://www.anexo-group.com/content/about/about. Around half of the credit hire cases that are reported seem to involve them.
It was therefore with considerable joy that I read a case today where they suffered a bloody nose, despite employing a top KC to argue their case - https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/KB/2023/2159.html
In essence, their client, one Mr Majid Ali, was the no doubt proud owner of a Volvo XC 60. It was parked when it was hit by a Polish truck. For obvious reasons, liability was not a problem, so Anexo promptly put Mr Ali into a hire car whilst he was being repaired, running up typically modest hire charges of £21,588.72.
Anexo then sued for the recovery of these charges. It’s a depressing reflection of the law that the County Court judge decided the hire charges were entirely reasonable. It’s equally depressing that despite the fact that (1) the MOT certificate for the car had expired over four months before the accident; and (2) that Mr Ali, who had previously been disqualified from driving, had insured the car in his cousin’s name (known as `fronting') the judge decided that these factors alone were not sufficient to defeat the claim for the hire charges.
However, the judge did manage to defeat the claim on the ingenious, but eminently sensible grounds that as the car had no MOT certificate it could not be legally driven on the road, and that Mr Ali had not therefore suffered any loss by the car being off the road. He therefore denied recovery of the hire charges in their entirety.
This is where Anexo wheeled on their KC, and appealed to the High Court. However, I’m delighted to say that the High Court judge upheld the decision, describing it as “careful, well reasoned and insightful".
Such a decision is obviously only a minor setback for these ambulance chasers, but it did brighten up an otherwise tedious Monday!
(But then I haven't owned a car for a couple of decades now...)