SCS Law Letter before claim for multiple PCNs-over £1000!!

DiegoFuego · 26 October 2016 at 12:07PM

Hi.

The alleged contraventions were for overstays in a retail car park. As they were all over a year ago I cannot recall if I did actually overstay and definitely not how long. I use the car park regularly so it is hard to say.

The signs are quite high up. None of the writing is clear as it is in relatively small print. The charge for overstaying is definitely small writing.

Regarding the "no loss" and GPEOL, I saw some recent arguments in this forum (maybe written by yourself, apologies if not the case) that Beavis did not throw out those cases but that if it can be shown that the PPC does not have a legitimate interest in the car park like it did in the Beavis case, then "no loss" and GPEOL can then be relied on.

Is this not the case then?

Coupon-mad · 26 October 2016 at 3:14PM

No, you will not be able to argue 'GPEOL' re a retail park overstay because that was exactly the situation Mr Beavis found himself in. IMHO (and I'm only an armchair lawyer of course!) only in a case where the contract is completely different and more simple (e.g. an unpaid parking tariff) can it feasibly be argued that the charge is wholly disproportionate to the tariff. Beavis killed the GPEOL argument for parking overstays, in general terms.

However you CAN argue no 'legitimate interest' has been shown to exist because each case is different and ParkingEye's complex arrangement with the landowner was likely not to be the same as here. And you can throw in quite truthfully that you cannot recall the days on question as they were unremarkable and may not have been you driving (unless you appealed each one and said who was driving!).

And you can throw in that there is no proof that the cameras have not merely defaulted to the daily 'first in/last out' photos (could have been a series of double visits to return items or drop a passenger off then collect them later?) on those days, as 'first in/last out' photo default is a known fault of ANPR technology. Presumably there is no evidence that UKPC have shown that they have eliminated that possibility (and they cannot disprove that 100%, because VRNs are not always captured - some cameras have a very high failure rate and missing a VRN entirely as it leaves and returns later, can be due to incorrect camera angle, or weather conditions like rain on the camera or glare).

So even if they reeled off a list of VRN captures on those days to try to say 'look, the car only made one visit', that simply doesn't show the 'not captured' VRNs which are often 10% of vehicles but can be a lot more missed, if the camera is badly placed, not reliable or simply due to weather, glare, or lorries tailgating a car.

Have you done the AoS earlier this month and what was the date on the claim form?

Cue 'daytona0' turning up on this UKPC thread...(seems to be a UKPC apologist/employee so beware of that poster's rants).

DiegoFuego · 26 October 2016 at 5:35PM

The car park has not got that technology. I believe it is just a guy with a cameraphone taking pictures of the cars.

I have done the AoS and I believe the date is the 6th but I do not have it to hand so I could be wrong.

Coupon-mad · 27 October 2016 at 12:20AM

DiegoFuego wrote: »

The car park has not got that technology. I believe it is just a guy with a cameraphone taking pictures of the cars.

I have done the AoS and I believe the date is the 6th but I do not have it to hand so I could be wrong.

OK so call into question the reliability of the guy with the camera, bearing in mind UKPC's modus operandi and banning recently:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11858473/Parking-firm-UKPC-admits-faking-tickets-to-fine-drivers.html

There is nothing to say the camera was showing the right time, these can be so easily altered that it is scandalous. I don't suppose that any of the sets of photos show the same background or same shadows claimed to be hours apart?

DiegoFuego · 28 October 2016 at 6:04AM

Hi

The pictures they have sent are not the best quality and some of them are very similar to each other in terms of surroundings. Many of them have time stamps that are completely illegible so you couldn't say what time or day they were taken.

In terms of my defence, if I make the edits you have suggested are there any further major points that I have missed that I should include?

And are there any information requests I should be making or any other things I should be doing apart from submitting my initial defence?

DiegoFuego · 2 November 2016 at 9:27PM

Hi

This is more to coupon-mad as she gave me the original advice but if anyone else can help that will be great.

I am due to submit my defence and I have been looking through the threads at other defences to see if there is anything I have missed and unfortunately I am now quite confused and I need some explanation please?

I originally placed some case law pertaining to Parkingeye and VCS and others in my defence but I was told that these cases are old and have been knocked out by Beavis. However I have been looking at others very recent defences with similar circumstances and they have those same cases in and they have not been told the same.

What is the current advice regarding those cases? Do you put them in defences or not?

Many thanks.

Coupon-mad · 2 November 2016 at 9:31PM

Show me which ones you were looking at? I haven't seen many recent ones citing 'VCS v Ibbotson' or 'PE v Sharma' if that's what you mean. And that latter case means pretty much nothing since the Beavis case superseded it (and it did).

DiegoFuego · 2 November 2016 at 10:15PM

Here are a couple of examples.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5528717&highlight=bargepole+court&page=2#

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5484104&highlight=bargepole+court#topofpage

Thanks

Coupon-mad · 2 November 2016 at 10:35PM

A MIL case is completely different, don't even read those, there are more grounds there to argue that MIL have no standing. Not the same in a defence v a PPC.

And the other one was from 4 months ago and the OP got very few comments before putting the defence in. As I said in reply #51, a defence from a few months ago is too old to be reading and there are newer examples:

Posters called steady.alone (today) and bigsej (this month) both have threads which show a recent defence written out, albeit not a UKPC one but you will be able to see arguments that have nothing about 'loss' or GPEOL or old cases like PE v Gardam, or the Ibbotson case, or the UTCCRs. It looks as though this is based upon one from a few months back = too old.

Only the other day, this week, I edited the NEWBIES sticky thread and updated the linked defences shown under 'Small Claim?' so some of those there now are worth a read. There's a lovely long one written by someone on pepipoo, Janeo, which has lots of defence points and is well written. Linked in the NEWBIES thread as a very recent example.

DiegoFuego · 3 November 2016 at 12:29AM

Thank you! I will look into them and add any points I am missing.

SCS Law Letter before claim for multiple PCNs-over £1000!!

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