Landlord keeps stonewalling over deposit

carpetbelly

geiv some info
My refresh button's getting annoyed with me now. lol

LittleMissAspie

What a saga, can't wait for today's outcome.

MrChips

Hi guys, I'm back at work and sooo busy that I can't write it up just now. Full update to follow later today hopefully.

A very very brief summary is that the judge wouldn't hear all three claims! She said they had no right to be co-claimants as they had separate tenancy agreements. While this is true, we feel after all the calls, letters and forms (not to mention £200!) that someone at the court could have raised this!

Anyway, the judge therefore refused to discuss my girlfirend's case, or that of the other guy, and stuck only to the case of the girl who was charged for £650 for using electricity. We had to sit at the back in silence while the other girl was subjected to a barrage of questions - very frustrating.

The landlord didn't show up (although the judge told us he had showed up at the court earlier that day to claim he was ill, and to hand in two pieces of evidence). After going over some of the facts of the case, the judge said that as he had not provided any defense whatsovever, she was going to award the full £650 to the girl, plus interest plus court costs.

We will have to start our claim all over again

I arrived at the court in a bullish mood - I left disappointed and quite angry. The judge was not pleasant at all and spoke in a highly patronising and aggressive manner. English isn't my girlfriend's first language, although she is fluent. A couple of times she asked the judge to clarify why all three wouldn't be able to coclaim, to which the judge just repeated the same statement but three times more slowly!

zebulon

MrChips wrote: »

English isn't my girlfriend's first language, although she is fluent. A couple of times she asked the judge to clarify why all three wouldn't be able to coclaim, to which the judge just repeated the same statement but three times more slowly!

oh, I know that very well !!! :mad:


well, this is all quite frustrating - the good thing is that you might not have a less moody judge next time round.

They managed to put you in a mess though regarding separate/joint etc claims! :mad:

And why did she decide to go today with the electricity girl? random? or was her name first on the paperwork???

right ok, you said it was a short summary...so I just have to wait

narced

MrChips wrote: »

A very very brief summary is that the judge wouldn't hear all three claims! She said they had no right to be co-claimants as they had separate tenancy agreements. While this is true, we feel after all the calls, letters and forms (not to mention £200!) that someone at the court could have raised this!

Sounds like a previous comment you made:

"However, we did get a letter through the post saying a judge had looked at our claim and that we would need to fill in ANOTHER form in order to get the claim put into the names of all three claimants rather than just the one "officially named" claimant as it is at the moment."

may have been misinterpreted? Surely this person should have made it clear you needed to put in 3 separate applications? Oh well put it down to experience...

BrandNewDay

Sorry the judge was an !!!!.
I would expect the landlord to show up, next time, as he's now learned that being sick doesn't help his case, any.

Don't despair. Stick it to this jerk. You know we are all rooting for you, right?

MrChips

Hello again. First of all, thanks for all the support I/we have recieved on here today and over the past days/weeks/months! Everyone has been really helpful.

I'm not in the best of moods right now, although this is more to do with my job than this morning's events. I'm about as busy at work as I have ever been so to take a morning's holiday which turned out to be fruitless is the last thing I needed. I left the office at 11.30 pm yesterday and it could be the same again tonight Oh well....back to the point.

We arrived at the court in plenty of time for the 10.15am scheduled start. We were then kept hanging around for well over an hour in a stuffy waiting room, crossing our fingers that the landlord wouldn't come in, until we were eventually called. This was when things started to go wrong as the usher was reluctant to let more than just the one girl (whose name was first on the claim) go in. My girlfriend had to explain that she was a co-claimant and that I was a witness to which the usher said she would have to check with the judge as she was only expecting one claimant and that as I was a witness I would have to sit silently at the back. I had been expecting to be able to participate!

We were all allowed in eventually, but the judge was far from the kind-hearted figure I had been expecting - she was a real dragon! When we had sat down, she revealed that the landlord had turned up at the court earlier claiming he was too ill to attend the hearing, while handing in two pieces of paper. She showed the pieces of paper to my girlfriend and it turned out they were simply copies of the breakdown of deductions he had issued and which were already in our evidence pack!

She then went on to say that as it was now evident that each claimant had a separate tenancy agreement, the cases would need to be separate. She would therefore only deal with the original claimant in this case, namely the girl with the electricity deduction. I should also add here that the third claimant was unable to attend as he had had to rush back to Poland as his wife was ill.

As mentioned in my previous post, my girlfriend tried to clarify why the judge wouldn't be able to look into all the claims together as they were clearly related. The judge said "Because.......they......are.......separate......claims. Which.....part.....don't......you.....understand". After a few more attempts to get her to see reason, it was clear she wasn't going to budge an inch so my girlfriend had to get up and join me at the back

The judge then proceded to quiz the other girl for a few minutes as to the landlord's comments that she had brought in an unauthorised heater and run up an £800 electricity bill. After she had gone through that, she said that as there was no evidence to justify the deduction, and no inventory, she could only pass judgement in favour of the claimant. She then offered interest and other expenses on top. We were just relieved to get out of there!

So back to square one. To be fair, the judge did offer us a big hint at the end that my girlfriend would win her case if she applied again (assuming the landlord didn't offer any further defence). We will therefore probably apply again but first I think we'll see how much joy the other girl has in getting her £800 or so from the landlord. If she can't get it without a huge fight, we may reassess if it is worth it.

So, it all left a bit of a bad taste in the mouth, which in my opinion was unnecessary. If the judge had said "I'm afraid to say it won't be possible to go through all the claims today as you have separate agreements" we would have been disappointed but could have seen reason. Similarly, it seems she knew all along she would award the claim in favour of the other girl but dragged it out for all it was worth.

I guess we just have to look on the brightside and think of the landlord having to cough up £800!

BrandNewDay

I wonder if it can be sold to a debt collector?? That may be a way of getting some money for your trouble, although you won't get much, I don't think.

MrChips

I'm not quite sure what you mean, can we sell our claim to be owed money even before a court judgement?

BrandNewDay

MrChips wrote: »

I'm not quite sure what you mean, can we sell our claim to be owed money even before a court judgement?

I think you have to have the judgement. But, once there's a judgement, then there's a debt. I do think debts can be sold. What you need to do is A) find out how much luck the first claimant has in collecting her £800, and how one goes about getting these debts collected. I believe it works by selling the debt. Anyway, a judgement would be a pretty good "debt" in that it's pretty iron-clad. And, the guy owns property so may well be a juicy target.