The Federal Court recently considered allegations of double charging by Scottish Pacific Business Finance, a St George Bank subsidiary that specialises in debt factoring.In a decision delivered three weeks ago, Robert French ruled in favour of Benchmark Debtor Finance and Peter Langham, Benchmark's managing director, as defendants in a case bought by Scottish Pacific and a bankrupt customer of SPBF (which had also been a customer of Benchmark).Scottish Pacific had sued Benchmark and Langham (a former WA manager for Scottish Pacific), over a complaint that Benchmark had arranged additional factoring facilities with Calejec, a clothing manufacturer, in a fashion that interfered with Scottish Pacific's prior interest in certain debts of Calejec.Some addition background to this case is related allegations by Scottish Pacific, and by SPBF's managing director, Clive Isenberg, that when Langham quit SPBF for AGC (and before setting up Bechmark), Langham had taken confidential customer information and used that to market Benchmark's competing factoring services.So much for the background.Quoting the judgement:"In an email to Gary Rudder of AGC, dated 3 April 1998, Langham referred to the letter and the fact that Greg Charlwood, another former employee of [Scottish Pacific], had received a similar letter and was having it handled by Clayton Utz. "He said: Â'My personal opinion is that Clive Isenberg deserves all he gets and if some of his dubious actions, such as charging penalties twice, come out through this all the better'."And what are these "dubious actions" of Isenberg and Scottish Pacific, and which penalties were charged twice, in what circumstances, how often and to whom? Robert French's judgement does not consider these questions.Peter Langham declined to speak about this yesterday, while Clive Isenberg did not return our call.