Courts do not like these. Nor do borrowers. Banks have a habit of plucking them out of the black-hole that is their securities department long after the parties have forgotten about them. In this case HHJ MacDuff QC sitting as a Judge of the High Court held on the particular facts that an all-monies charge taken out in 1988 had in fact been taken as security for an initial loan of 65,000 which had since been repaid and which should therefore have been released. He accordingly ordered delivery up and cancellation of the charge notwithstanding that the borrowers had run up and defaulted on subsequent borrowings which, ordinarily, would have been secured by the charge.
National Westminster Bank plc v Patel [2004] All ER (D) 429 (May)
