Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Tui/Thomson ONLY

scorpiouk

JPears wrote: »

What was their respoinse when you contacted them?

no response to the email..

3 phone calls, all rang for 20+ before i gave up..

legal_magpie

OK Scorpio. No more whinging about them. Just get on and enforce your judgment.

Moneyedout

Just returned from court today and unfortunately we were not successful.
We had brought our case just inside the six year limit but unfortunately named TUI as the defendant . The local law students advised us that we could add Thomson Airways as an additional defendant, which we did and receive the subsequent approval from the courts and eventually another defence from Thomson.
Thomson requested several stays over a period of 12 months
We did have one court hearing some time ago when a Barrister came all the way from London (to Devon) just to ask for a stay awaiting Dawson's
judgement.
Today however another Barrister argued that adding Thomson outside the six year limit and it being backdated to our original claim, gave us an unfair advantage. Another Judge had struck out TUI name in a previous order.
He quoted various points of law and cases unknown to us.
The Judge then dismissed our case.
The Judge also said that the responsibly was on us to prove that we were on the flight.Thomson have destroyed all their paper work for that time but the Judge would not just accept our booking form alone. We unfortunately have no boarding passes from that long ago.
We were also informed that we would have to prove our flight was delayed and that flight stats were not permissible. How else could we prove it was delayed?
As it was it was dismissed before going down that road.
We feel we have been the victims of a wrong decision by a court Judge in the first place who apparently should not have granted the addition without a hearing. There were no objections in Thomson original defence regarding this unfair advantage and their only defence at the time was the two year ruling. Thus, when Dawson;s went in our favour we thought we were home and dry.
How wrong can you be?
Out of pocket, A little bruised.
Will now put it to bed.
Good luck to everyone but be wary

Vauban

I'm sorry to hear this moneyout: what a shame.

The small claims track can produce some perverse results sometimes - and there are no absolute guarantees. But to suggest that the burden of proof lies on the claimant to show that the flight was late appears absurd - were Thomson even denying this?

If you'd got the name of the defendant right initially, perhaps all this wouldn't have unravelled in the way it has. But I think you've been very unlucky all the same.

Tyzap

Yes that's bad luck.

It also proves that sending most claims to a bulk collection centre for aviation cases, such as Liverpool, is probably a good idea. Devon seems to be on the periphery for information filtering down the court system.

JPears

Bad luck. It would seem time and inaccuracies (from all parties, including the court) have contributed to your failure.
We all know that it would have been cheaper to pay up than pay for the services of several barristers.:mad:
Given that the statute of limitations is 6 years, all companies, not just airlines, should be obliged to keep personal data on record at least for this length of time.
Accounting information, medical records etc have to be kept for much longer periods and in this day and age, simple data storage is not expensive at all.
I bet you never received notification from Thomson, at the time of the delay,as they are oblige to provide, that you maybe due compensation?

legal_magpie

Sorry you had a rough time. There is always a risk in issuing proceedings so close to the limitation period and in this case adding a Defendant so late could be held to be prejudicial although I would have argued that there was no prejudice to Thomson at all given that they are part of the same company.

As to proof, the rule is the Claimant must prove his case on the balance of probabilities. I would have expected your booking form plus your own oral evidence to have been sufficient. It's possible that the late addition plus lack of documentation tipped the scales against you with the Judge .

If you think that the Judge made an error of law you can ask for permission to appeal. If you didn't seek permission from the DJ, you must apply to the CJ for permission. A transcript of the judgment would be useful. But please remember that "I think the Judge got it wrong and want another go" isn't grounds for appeal.

Also, if you do appeal and lose you could be ordered to pay Thomson's costs so think carefully.

AngieM2

Hi all, I didn't get a reply to my post below about whether you all think I'm entitled to claim.....does anyone have a view?

JPears

Bumped to the top for noobs

Moneyedout

Thanks to everyone for their commiserations re my sad loss today.
Vauban - They said they had no record of the flight as all the records were destroyed and would not accept Flight Stats which showed matching flight numbers to those on our booking form.
Legal Magpie. We do feel a little hard done by on some of the Judges rulings but the request for dismissal came out of the blue and definitely caught us out. Definitely had enough and will not be appealing.
Will be kicking myself for getting the name wrong in the first instance.
My parting words to their Barrister was that I hoped he would be sending them a really large bill (he had come down the day before so had also incurred a hotel bill). He smiled and said that he would.