MBNA Canada Bank

Proposed Settlement Reached

On August 10, 2012, the parties entered into a proposed settlement of this action.  The settlement agreement can be viewed in the documents section below.

Under the settlement, BofA Canada Bank will pay $8 million in to a settlement fund.  The settlement fund will be paid:

• To legal fees (subject to court approval, these will be 30% of the fund, $2.4 million, plus disbursements & taxes);
• 10% of the balance to the Class Proceedings Fund;
• $500,000 to charity; and
• the balance will be paid as credits to each MBNA cardholder who has an active MBNA credit card at the time the credits are processed.

Expanded Class Definition

Under the proposed settlement, the class will be expanded to include anyone who held an MBNA or Cuets Financial credit card up to November 30, 2011.

Notice of Proposed Settlement Hearing

The notice of the settlement approval hearing can be viewed in the documents section below.

The hearing to approve the settlement and class counsel fees will take place on October 11, 2012 at the Court House, 361 University Ave., Toronto, commencing at 10:00 a.m.  Class Members are welcome to attend.

A case conference will be held on November 4, 2011 to review the Plaintiff’s materials for the summary judgment motion and confirm the schedule leading to the motion.

The Plaintiff has completed its examination for discovery of the Defendants. Based on admissions from discovery, the Plaintiff will bring a motion for summary judgment. Essentially, the Plaintiff will be seeking a judgment that MBNA received interest in excess of 60% contrary to the Criminal Code. The summary judgment motion will be heard June 25-29, 2012.

The examinations for discovery have been rescheduled to July 19-21, 2011.

The Plaintiff has successfully brought a motion to require the Defendant MBNA Canada Bank to produce additional documents for the litigation. On February 4, 2011, the Ontario court determined that the documents the Plaintiff requested were relevant to one or more common issues and the evidence on the motion demonstrated there were documents missing from MBNA’s productions. The decision can be viewed in the documents section below. As a result of this decision and the anticipated additional documents to be produced, the oral examinations for discovery have been rescheduled to June 2011.

The parties have exchanged relevant documents and have tentatively scheduled oral examinations for November 2010.

The parties are currently proceeding to the discovery stage in the litigation. Trial preparation is ongoing.

The Honourable Mr. Justice Cullity ordered that the trial be litigated in two stages. The first stage will determine the certified common issues, leaving to be decided at the second stage those issues concerning the amount of damages, or restitution, and punitive damages. The parties are conferring on the conduct of a protocol to sample the Defendant’s data with respect to the transactions in dispute.

The Class Proceeding Committee awarded funding for this action.

Application for Leave to Appeal of the Court of Appeal for Ontario’s order granting certification was denied by the Supreme Court of Canada.

This action was certified as a class proceeding by the Court of Appeal for Ontario.