From: Cynic 
Newsgroups: uk.finance uk.legal
Subject: Re: Ex-employer wants extra payment back
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 16:20:35 +0000

On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 15:13:20 GMT, Ronald Raygun
 wrote:

>> Even if you cannot pay it all back immediately due to having spent it,
>> your position is similar to getting a legitimate bill that you cannot
>> afford to pay.  If you do not reach an agreement (and it is *you* who
>> are defaulting), your ex-employer could still sue you and you could
>> end up paying the money back together with legal fees and interest.
>
>Not quite.  Yes, the employer could sue and would win, but there is no
>basis for charging interest.  There is no loan agreement, they gave/lent
>you the money without your permission, so they can't expect interest.

You are incorrect IIUC.  The courts have for some time been awarding
interest on late payments.

>Also, legal fees can be avoided (apart from your own, of course) by making
>a pre-trial offer to settle by *reasonable* instalments.  If they still
>sue because they think the proposed instalments are unreasonable, the court
>may nonetheless find them to be reasonable.  That means they essentially
>had no basis to sue (because they didn't win anything in court that you had
>not already offered) and therefore their legal fees cannot be added to the
>claim, nor can court fees.

Correct.  That is why I urged the OP to offer such a settlement.  Note
that a court will not regard *any* offer as being reasonable if they
find that the person had the means to pay it all at the time but
*chose* not to do so.  I suggest that as soon as the judge asks to
look at the OP's bank statements for the time he was first asked to
pay the money back, the judge will be able to form an opinion as to
whether that was or was not the case.

>I would suggest to offer to repay over 5 years.  If they think that
>unreasonable, they will say so.  You can then offer to pay it back over,
>say, one year.  It's unlikely a court would deem that unreasonable, so
>they would risk losing any suit which sought to force you to pay it
>back quicker.

If you start out by making a totally unreasonable offer, they may
decide to go straight to legal action - at which point your
unreasonable offer will stand against you.

-- 
Cynic