Another court loss for parking eye

4consumerrights

Parking Prankster's blog reveals yet another court loss for Parking Eye - with the aid of a Pepipoo lay representive

This was case 3JD02719, ParkingEye v Davison, Peterborough County Court, 17/1/2014. ParkingEye have lost every case where a lay representative has aided the defendant.

http://parking-prankster.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/parkingeye-spanked-in-court-importance.html

Well done to all involved!

More black eyes! - they don't seem to recover before another spanking.

kirkbyinfurnesslad_2

Someones going to get sore bum

SevenTowers

And another one, no contract between PE and the defendant, case dismissed

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showtopic=82447

Bargepole attended this one, he'll definitely have to update his autosignature after today!

bargepole

Date: 23/01/2014
At: High Wycombe County Court
Before: District Judge Devlin
Claim No.: 3JD02357
Claimant: ParkingEye Ltd (represented by Mrs Newman-Raine, solicitor)
Defendant: Mr James Gosnold (represented by myself)

This was a claim for £165 for an 11 minute overstay of the free parking limit at Wembley Retail Park in Dec.2012. The site has multiple national retailers, and a food court.

The defendant had submitted a Defence Statement based on a template obtained from someone on Pepipoo, which was a bit of an unstructured rant, and focusing on too many irrelevant points, such as identity of the creditor. I put together a Skeleton Argument which was hand delivered to the court on Monday.

We had a brief chat with the solicitor (a very nice lady) beforehand, and it transpired that James had offered £40 to settle out of court, and PE had said they wouldn’t accept less than £95. She also hadn’t seen the Skeleton, so we gave her a copy. She mentioned that this was her second PE case, the previous one having been in Basingstoke, where another Pepipoo rep was in attendance.

The case started on time at 11:30, and Judge Devlin said that before we got into any issues of losses, penalties, etc., he wanted to establish whether PE had standing to bring the claim.

He had open clause 2.1 of Sch.4 of PoFA, and needed to explore whether there was a “relevant contract”. He also had an image of PE’s signage, and thought that it didn’t create any contractual relationship between PE and the driver.

The first document to be examined was the witness statement from the managing agents, Workman LLP, signed by Richard Tapply. I said that I wished to challenge that statement, on the basis that a) we had telephoned Workman and been told that Mr Tapply had left the firm several months ago; b) The statement was not on Workman’s headed paper, so wasn’t valid; and c) The statement did not mention any authorisation to pursue claims through the courts, and therefore was not in accordance with BPA CoP 7.1.

The Judge agreed that the document was worthless, and Mrs Newman then produced the most heavily redacted version of PE’s landowner contract I have ever seen, even clause 22 was blanked out. The Judge had difficulty reading it as the print was so small, but he looked at it and decided that it didn’t satisfy the “relevant contract” provisions of PoFA. He asked if I had any comments, I said that I agreed that the claimant had no standing, and in fact a similar case had been decided by DJ Jones recently in the same court. He said he was aware of that case, but did not want to go through the Judgment, he would decide this on its own merits.

He informed Mrs Newman that the claim was doomed to fail on the locus standi issue, and therefore we didn’t need to get into any further arguments about whether any loss was suffered, and if so by whom. He asked if I had anything to add, and I tried to raise the issue of (text removed from MSE Forum Team) committing perjury by stating that PE’s costs were £53 per ticket, when it could be proven from DVLA figures and their own published accounts that the true figure was nearer £15. The Judge said that didn’t relate to the issue of standing, so he wasn’t going to examine that, but if we felt that perjury had been committed, we should inform the Police.

He then summed up, dismissing the claim for the reasons given above, and awarded £90 costs to the defendant for loss of earning.

Afterwards we had a chat with the solicitor, and she agreed when I said PE were asking her to fight a case with one hand tied behind her back, due to the rubbish bundle they gave her.

Then it was off to Costa for a celebratory latte, and 100% success rate against PE still intact.

spacey2012

As predicted, the default no shows and poor defence are over and they are now at the defended cases stage.
What people are getting wrong is your costs.

Every hour spent preparing listed down and rota at £18 per hour.
Add in one full day of wages plus travel to and from and one meal allowance of £11.
All stationary, stamps etc..

8-10 hours case preparation is average @ £18

Total this + interest at court base rate.

If they lose as they are doing, you might as well have a few quid


You should ideally be around the £350 mark once your days wage is allowed.
If everyone does this, they might get the message.
What with the out of work agency solicitors they hire they are going to be around a grand out of pocket each case they lose.

Apparently they have 8000-ish to go and are adding more daily, you do the Maths.

But please get those expenses listed including your time, they are getting away too easy and way too light.

bargepole

spacey2012 wrote: »

... What people are getting wrong is your costs. ...You should ideally be around the £350 mark once your days wage is allowed. ...

Afraid not.

Defendant costs in small claims are capped at £90, unless you can prove unreasonable behaviour by the other side.

kirkbyinfurnesslad_2

Spacey its all very well quoting your figure but as bargepole points out there is very limited scope for costs

hoohoo

EDW did try to claim more for the technix case, bus was capped at £90

spacey2012

£90 is capped loss of earning claim.
This is EACH for you and your representative.
So I hope you filed for your £90 as lay representative.
Other costs are judged if the Plaintiff has acted unreasonably .

Now, where has parking Eye ever acted reasonably.

I am not saying, they will be awarded, what i am saying is always put forward the argument that they have, hence why they have lost the case.

Judges are getting very snarled at these parking scammers, well worth having a pop IMO.
If you only walk out with the £90 EACH, so be it, but at least put it forward.
These are dealt with after judgement, so it is well worth putting forward the claim.

4consumerrights

bargepole wrote: »

Well done bargepole



The Judge agreed that the document was worthless, and Mrs Newman then produced the most heavily redacted version of PE’s landowner contract I have ever seen, even clause 22 was blanked out. The Judge had difficulty reading it as the print was so small, but he looked at it and decided that it didn’t satisfy the “relevant contract” provisions of PoFA. He asked if I had any comments, I said that I agreed that the claimant had no standing, and in fact a similar case had been decided by DJ Jones recently in the same court. He said he was aware of that case, but did not want to go through the Judgment, he would decide this on its own merits.

More dodgy witness statements and surprise surprise heavily redacted microscopically worded contract supplied :
Educated guess at some redacted terms/conditions:
- most of column one; clauses 3.5, 3.6, 3.7. 38, 3.9. 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13; clause 5.1; 5.2 5.3; clause (all parts) 10; 12; 17; 20; 21 and 22:cool:


With regards to Spacey's comments regarding costs etc-

Has anyone yet issued a counterclaim against parking eye at the same time (thinking in particular where breach of Equality Act occurs) which would raise the stakes somewhat?

There is also no harm in asking the Judge to award costs for a lay representative - though IMO - don't push it too much - say perhaps for travel.

Practice procedures:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part27/pd_part27#7.1

Costs

7.1 Attention is drawn to Rule 27.14 which contains provisions about the costs which may be ordered to be paid by one party to another.
7.2 The amount which a party may be ordered to pay under rule 27.14(2)(b) (for legal advice and assistance in claims including an injunction or specific performance) is a sum not exceeding £260.
7.3 The amounts which a party may be ordered to pay under rule 27.14(3)(c) (loss of earnings) and (d) (experts’ fees) are:
(1) for the loss of earnings or loss of leave of each party or witness due to attending a hearing or staying away from home for the purpose of attending a hearing, a sum not exceeding £90 per day for each person, and

Nice to see updated sig though Bargepole!

ledsons_teeth

Huge congratulations to Bargepole for another excellent showing. I firmly believe that the PE court cases will dry up very soon.
Perhaps one of you better informed people can answer this question. As PE in-house Solicitor, would it be the lovely Miss Ledson's job to prepare the court bundle for the acting solicitors in these cases. Or maybe it's left to a junior staff member. Either way I can't help thinking that the court cases themselves don't seem too high a priority to PE. It's as if they believed that they just had to turn up to win or that they merely had to fight a few cases to justify their mountain of LBC flyers.