Help!! Court Struck Out can Finance Co Resurrect

newatthis13

Really need some advice on this....Purchased a car using Northridge Finance 6 years ago. Everything was fine until Credit Crunch and my husbands company collapsed. Lost house etc.

Kept up payments as long as we could but then offered Northridge and offer to settle but they refused. Allowed two months reduced payments only. They defaulted the agreement and took out an action but then stayed it. At this point we had paid £20,000 of the £25,000 loan.

We then managed to pay all but £1000 and since last year have not managed anymore.So £24,000. In April we got a letter from their solicitor which we responded to by asking about commissions paid to the dealer who is no longer in business (we are pretty sure that secret commissions were paid but not disclosed). We had a response that was pretty ambiguous just saying to the best of their knowledge no secret commissions were paid. Since then we have heard nothing from the Solicitor or from Northridge. Two weeks ago we got papers from the Court to say the matter had been struck out.

Today we have received papers from the same court to say they are applying to have the matter reinstated and to recover the car. The papers were sent to our old address (we would never have received them had it not been for a neighbour who sends on our mail). We have advised the Solicitor on two occasions which he has acknowledged of our change of address almost a year ago!

What is the likelihood of this being resurrected by the Judge. Do we have any argument we can use? The car is adapted for wheelchair use and would be a huge loss. Northridge wont listen to any argument for settlement but we don't see why we should have to pay for more costs because the solicitor made a blunder and allowed it to be struck out.
Finding the money is going to be very difficult out of disability benefit.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

DarkConvict

Given there is only a £1000 remaining and the car has been modified I doubt a judge would let them take the car back. You had already offered a settlement but they refused. If it all goes ahead it may go down to a CCJ and monthly payments instead.

Solicitors can be terrible and i honestly have no idea how they get away with it. If court papers are sent to the wrong address and you do not have time to submit a defence you can get a court order set aside to give you that time again.

As you can tell from my responses i don't really have an answer for you. I hope someone else does. Try giving 10past6 a Pm as he knows the courts quite well.

newatthis13

Thanks! Thats sort of encouraging.........I think! I will PM the other guy.

We can slow it down by getting it sent to our local court as we have moved but I cant help thinking that the solicitor sent it to our old address on purpose so that we would not get the papers and then would not turn up in court. It would then seem as if we were not opposing the action and he would get it reinstated. Dirty trick. He's obviously embarrassed that he has let this slip and I cant help thinking that Northridge probably don't even know this has happened yet. Perhaps we should drop him in it???? :beer:

DarkConvict

As I said, if you don't get the court papers because they sent it to the wrong address it looks bad on them. if you have to pay the court to get it set aside (£75) you could seek to sue there solicitor for financial loss. You will always be given a chance to have your say for all court orders.

You should always have it directed to your local court so you can turn up and speak to the judge yourself.

newatthis13

We have just had a letter from the Court to say that the Judge will not allow the case to be moved to our local Court for the hearing to see if the case can be reinstated.This means that we have to go all the way to the court where we used to live for a 15 minute hearing.

Not sure if we should read into this that the Judge is mindful not to reinstate so does not want to waste court resources transferring or is already denying us our right. As a disabled person this is going to make things quite difficult for us.

Additionally I should have mentioned that the money that we had started to save and put away in case we had to pay back this money, we used for a further urgent adaption (medical advice) on the car when we found out the case had been struck out, thinking we were no longer going to be pursued for the money. Now we would not have these funds if the case went against us.

Should we read anything into this?

DVardysShadow

newatthis13 wrote: »

We have just had a letter from the Court to say that the Judge will not allow the case to be moved to our local Court for the hearing to see if the case can be reinstated.This means that we have to go all the way to the court where we used to live for a 15 minute hearing.

Not sure if we should read into this that the Judge is mindful not to reinstate so does not want to waste court resources transferring or is already denying us our right. As a disabled person this is going to make things quite difficult for us.

You need to check out what I am saying here. This is purely my take on it, it might help you understand it.

The reason the reinstatement hearing is not being transferred to your local court is because it is not 'your shout'. Essentially, it is a procedural argument between the finance co and the judiciary. If it is reinstated, it does not means that they have won their case, it means that they can have their case heard. At that stage, you can then state your case.

You do need to drop the slime bag solicitors in it for writing to your old address - it is an old trick - and if you have any correctly addressed mail from the solicitor predating the misdirected post, you can use this to show that they are misdirecting correspondence. I would consider asking the court to order that all correspondence is sent to your current address, but I have no idea how to go about this.

Check my advice out. If it is wrong and you act on it, it will cause you big problems - but it should help if it checks out.