Brooooooooooce:Presumably these test cases won't have any impact on cases where there is proven unenforceability by virtue of non compliance with s.61?

Without knowing what test cases have been referred to the High Court it is difficult to know what the impact on any of the legislation will be.

Obviously there are a lot of grey areas and areas where a judge has had to make a decision based on his own understanding of the legislation.

Take for instance you mention s.61 Signing of agreement

(1) A regulated agreement is not properly executed unless—

(a) a document in the prescribed form itself containing all the prescribed terms and conforming to regulations under section 60(1) is signed in the prescribed manner both by the debtor or hirer and by or on behalf of the creditor or owner, and

(b) the document embodies all the terms of the agreement, other than implied terms, and

(c) the document is, when presented or sent to the debtor or hirer for signature, in such a state that all its terms are readily legible.

For instance a decision could be made as to what the terms 'prescribed form' or 'prescribed manner' mean.

What do the terms 'embodies' and 'contained' mean (within one homogenous document or a bundle of documents with cross references) .

To my mind this is the crunch question.

If the High Court decides 'contained' can mean separate documents but refered to from the signature document then most of us are sunk!! However I would hope the Court would reflect Goode's definition: “It is clear that s61(1)(a) is referring to the prospective regulated agreement, so that its requirements must be fulfilled by that document and not just by another document to which it refers”.