The High Court yesterday handed down judgment in John-Phillips v Moneylink Finance Ltd (unrep, ChDiv, 18th July 2016). Moneylink had entered a credit agreement while unlicensed to lend. It had signed the credit agreement as purported agent of another company which was licensed, but the agency agreement had been found in an earlier case to be invalid. It followed that Moneylink had entered the agreement as an unlicensed principal, and would require an enforcement order from the court before it could recover the balance [presumably this is an erroneous reference to a validation order from the FCA]. However, Moneylink had already obtained judgment for the balance in the county court without any such order being granted. The county court had subsequently refused to set aside this judgment. The High Court allowed the appeal, but instead of remitting the claim to the county court to be tried, the High Court exercised the jurisdiction of a county court judge pursuant to s5(3) of the County Courts Act 1984 and struck out Moneylink’s claim.