What To Do When Friends Sue Friends

I was reminded again this morning about how difficult it is to isolate what judges should do when presented with two (former) friends litigating in their courtrooms.  Consider this recent decision from Northern Ireland.  

A friend gives a loan to a counterpart to help with a business venture.  The interest rate set is 36%.  The counterpart can't pay back and tries to deny details about the loan, the friendship, and the reasonableness of the interest rate.  In this decision, the court uses facts about the friendship both to find liability between friends -- and to relax the interest rate.  It is an interesting way to see friendship's relevance to help both parties to the dispute.  I explored some of this ambivalence about friendship's role in the courtroom in a piece earlier this year here.

 

H/T Paul MacMahon of Cambridge