Scared - Parking Eye Northampton Court claim form

Coupon-mad

That's a good start indeed. However, if you still have some days left before your defence must be in - and you only have 28 days from service of those court papers when you were away on holiday - I would get a carefully written letter sent recorded delivery to Brent Cross first (see below).*

You could actually ask your local court how to counter-claim when defending this, and in doing so you can add in Brent Cross as another party to the claim, which will then force a hearing. You could claim for, say, £200 damages for indirect sex discrimination so the 2 claims cancel each other out (and so it would be easier for the other parties to fold)! You would have to pay a fee to counter-claim though so this should only be done if you are determined to prove the discrimination and if your friend would be happy to be witness at any hearing.

And you would have to warn Brent Cross first to give them a chance to respond and cancel the charge.

Brent Cross surely very likely to insist that PE cancel it when you tell them this is likely to happen - in fact I would send THEM a complaint that doubles as a Letter before Claim and send it by recorded delivery.




Re the defence, you could add 'signage too high and too small to read - not seen by driver' and require PE to produce contemporaneous photos of all signs in that car park at that time.

You should also be writing a stroppy letter which also doubles as a 'Letter before Claim' from YOU to [Text removed by MSE Forum Team], the Solicitor at PE and say you have defended their claim of course as you have had to, but they have failed to send any LBC at all and if you had ever had one you would have been able to explain that the passenger was heavily pregnant. So, a mere alleged 16 minutes overstay is a breach of the Equality Act 2010 (indirect sex discrimination against certain groups of the female community).

See the Equality Act quotes below. In this case the passenger was a pregnant lady, who is expressly protected against any 'detriment' caused by any issue connected to her condition, and indeed the Act states that any contractual terms which cause discrimination are 'unenforceable'. Clearly a parking charge after an arbitrary time limit which applies to everyone regardless of disability or pregnancy, is liable to cause indirect discrimination. So you are claiming £200 plus claim fees & costs and this letter serves as a Letter Before Claim, and another has been sent to Brent Cross Retail Park since they will be added to this as a counter-claim if Parking Eye do not cancel immediately.

Even if you did lose you don't get any CCJ on your file if you pay up within weeks.

Cases to cite, maybe as an attachment:


ParkingEye v Fox-Jones
8 Nov 2013
Case dismissed when the judge said the evidence form ParkingEye was fundamentally flawed as it had not addressed a detailed point in the defence, calling into question the reliability of the ANPR system and specifically, the lack of time stamp synchronisation. Therefore PE's sketchy ANPR "evidence" which appears to rely on wifi with an inherent time delay, was deemed unreliable and the whole case depended upon it.

ParkingEye v Sharma.
23/10/2013 3QT62646 in the Brentford County Court
Before: District Judge Jenkins.
Claim dismissed. The judge said that contract was a commercial matter between PE and the landowner, and didn’t create any contractual relationship with motorists who used the car park.

22/07/2013 3QT51179 ParkingEye v R. Lomax (no link)
Claim dismissed. Pictures shown in court were of another car park in Grantham that directly contradicted the particulars of claim the Judge chose to dismiss the Claim.

17/07/2013 3QT33300 ParkingEye v Scott (no link)
Claim dismissed. The Judge found that the defendant could not have read the contract/signs and therefore dismissed the Claim.

1/12/2011 1XJ81016 Parking Eye v Smith
ParkingEye actually 'won' but only £15 for the P&D amount, and the Judge said that anything above the unpaid P&D fee was a PENALTY.






* Parking Eye and Brent Cross are jointly and severally liable for a breach of the Equality Act 2010 and their legal duty under the EHRC Equality Act Code of Practice for Service Providers which became law in April 2011:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/EqualityAct/servicescode.pdf

This is because they have failed in their legal duties as service providers. In this case the 'service' being the reasonable offer of the free parking space whilst shopping. Service Providers have a duty to avoid discrimination caused by their policies (here it's the time limit ) and would simply have meant taking proactive steps in advance, to avoid creating detriment for slower visitors with 'protected characteristics' (pregnancy). This protection extends to the driver accompanying the protected person, since the delay was caused by the protected characteristics of the passenger. Or at the very least, making it clear in signage or on store receipts or even in the PCN itself, that people protected by the Equality Act are in fact exempt from the same time limit. There were many chances for both parties to communicate this to its visitors but they have failed. Therefore, both parties have caused indirect discrimination by imposing the same time limit upon disabled, elderly or pregnant visitors as able-bodied customers are allowed:

''EQUALITY ACT 2010
29 Provision of services
(2) A service-provider (A) must not, in providing the service, discriminate against a person (B)—
(a)as to the terms on which A provides the service to B;
(b)by terminating the provision of the service to B;
(c)by subjecting B to any other detriment.

(3) A service-provider must not, in relation to the provision of the service, harass—
(a)a person requiring the service, or
(b)a person to whom the service-provider provides the service.

Coupon-mad

http://parking-prankster.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/do-you-have-court-hearing-with.html

Have you seen the above? Contact PP if your claim is still ongoing, he can help with info for your case.