I may have said that the precious quality at the heart of human rights principles is that they apply equally to everyone. But when I said "everyone", I might not have meant it.

Hedge funds for example, which are "legal persons" in the sense that as incorporated companies they have a legal personality, are apparently amongst the growing number of corporate victims of human rights violations. Last week two hedge funds – RAB Special Situations and SRM Global Master Fund – claimed that the nationalisation of Northern Rock amounted to a violation of their right to "peaceful enjoyment of possessions" set out in the first protocol to the European convention on human rights. Meanwhile, BAA is reported to be considering a claim against the competition commission on the basis that its decision to break up the airport company was a violation of its rights under the convention.

There seems something deeply counter-intuitive about this incarnation of human rights claims, rooted not in protecting such sacred freedoms as the right to life or a private and family life, but mitigating loss of profit.

And these are not renegade companies making highly creative use of human rights law. Research by legal publisher Sweet & Maxwell this week shows that the use of human rights arguments in commercial disputes is actually on the increase, with 6% of human rights cases in 2007 being disputes against HMRC concerning tax, and a further 3% being brought by businesses in other types of dispute.

The fact that businesses can invoke human rights arguments is not in itself groundbreaking. It goes back to the beginnings of domestic human rights litigation, with Wilson v First County Trust – one of the earliest landmark judgments under the Human Rights Act. The "victim" in Wilson was a pawnbroker that had given a customer a £5,000 loan in return for her car, and claimed a violation of its rights when a technicality with the contract meant she couldn't be made to repay it.

But lawyers are predicting that the credit crunch will bring a whole new wave of these unlikely "victims" as companies become increasingly creative – or desperate, depending on which way you look at it – to recoup their losses.

Some of these claims may be perfectly valid. The pawnbroker in Wilson complained about the lack of provisions under the consumer credit law to provide for a fair hearing – an issue that has broader implications for other areas of law. But hedge funds? Maybe when they said the Human Rights Act was capable of being a "villain's charter", they weren't so wrong after all.