Parking eye taking me to County COURT ....please help!!!

Benjo816

HI Please help,

I received a parking charge for £85 on in March which I ignored as I believed it was a scam. It was for an over stay by 1 hour.

The signage had been covered in gaffa tape so I assumed it was no longer in use.

Anyway, I now have a county court form through and it's asking me for £160 and for my defense.

Can I use the same defense as written below? I have to write my defense online on the government website, moneyclaim gov uk

I'm really stressed out about this whole process. I now have 10 days left to appeal against this and submit my defense to the court.

Any help would be gratefully received.

thanks

Dee140157

Read the NEWBIES thread http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/....php?t=4816822 focussing on post 5 where there is loads of helpful information.

Hopefully someone will be along to help later who knows more about this than I

peter_the_piper

Did you receive anything between the ticket and the court papers? Time scale seems very short. Any chance the sign is still covered and you can get piccies?

waamo

You may well want to check out Parking Pranksters guide to defending a court claim

http://www.parking-prankster.com/

Coupon-mad

Anyway, I now have a county court form through and it's asking me for £160 and for my defense.

Can I use the same defense as written below?

Oh my life! The post you referred to was a POPLA appeal, not a court defence!

Calm down and please go back to square one and read post #5 (only post #5) of the NEWBIE thread at the top of the forum. Read all links in that post #5.

Acknowledge the claim online and say you will 'defend in full'. Has to be done within 14 days.

You only get 28 days from service of those court papers, to get your defence submitted so start reading the links in the NEWBIES thread and stop reading stuff about 'appeals'. It is too late to appeal, you should have done that when you got the silly PCN in March and you too would have been reporting a POPLA win if you'd followed our advice.

Please face this properly by reading the links - you are the one who must understand your own defence so we can't write if for you from scratch but we'd be happy to critique it once you've got your head around what's what, by reading the links in post #5 of the NEWBIES thread first.

There are also HUNDREDS of other PE court Northampton claim threads for you to read here going back dozens of pages. Read LOTS, see what happened in their case, learn from all the outcomes. We have seen late 'POPLA referred' claims, settled claims, negotiations, complaints, cancelled claims, cases won and cases lost. It's all here. Please read back at least 20 pages clicking on every PE Northampton/claim thread title you see. Spend some hours on it.

And complain immediately in writing to the CEO or MD of the retailer, or the Centre Manager if it was a multi-facility or multi-store car park.

And get a pic of the sign covered in Gaffa tape!

Benjo816

HI, many many thanks for your posts. I am extremely stressed out about my parking fine issues.

I would still like to get this referred to popla.



So is the letter I've copied below a good template to send to the judge? Do I address it to a judges name? Or do I just send it to the court address written on the county court business centre claim form? (Katharine's house, katharine's street, Northampton, NN1 2LH).

Thank you very much,



Re: CLAIM NUMBER *********
I am the Defendant and the registered keeper of the vehicle relating to this alleged parking invoice.

The Defendant respectfully requests:

(a) - an Order for the claim to be stayed until the final decision made in the test cases heard on 22nd April 2014 by HHJ Moloney QC in Cambridge, a ParkingEye 'test case' ordered following a glut of Parking Eye litigation.

Under that original Order at Chelmsford, any similar cases pending in the Cambridge, Essex, Suffolk or Norfolk Courts were to be stayed pending the outcome of the Cambridge proceedings. In other Court areas, many ParkingEye cases have also been stayed for the same reason since this is a test case relevant to all claims this Claimant is currently pursuing. For example, on 29th January 2014 at the request of the Defendant, in 3JD06925 ParkingEye v Hopewell (Halifax) Deputy District Judge Gardner stayed the claim, pending the Cambridge test case and many more have been stayed since then. The most recent documented case - stayed for the Cambridge decision - that I can adduce was at Aberystwyth County Court, case A0JD0727 ParkingEye v Humphries, stayed immediately before listed for any hearing, by Order of District Judge Godwin on 17th April 2014.

(b) - Further and in the alternative, I request an Order for the claim to be stayed pending the allowance of both parties to undertake ADR in the form of a POPLA appeal.

This would follow many similar Court Orders in a number of this Claimant's cases now successfully resolved, e.g. in the order made by District Judge Mayor, Croydon Court, 13/09/13 (Case no. 3JD00719, ParkingEye v Mr O), and by Deputy District Judge Bridger, Southampton Court, 21/01/2014 (Case no. 3JD05448, ParkingEye v Gilmartin) and by Deputy District Judge Buckley, Blackburn County Court, 11/02/2014 (Case number 3JD10502, ParkingEye v Mrs P). POPLA impose no deadline and will allow a BPA member to issue a POPLA code at any stage.

It is not relevant if this claimant 'feels it is unsuitable' because in the legitimate interests of the consumer and in accordance with the Practice Direction, they should have explored this option more fully and offered it again far more openly, in pre-court correspondence. A small claim should be a step of last resort and as far as this overactive claimant is concerned that is far from the case. This claimant has failed to show any justification to refuse the parking industry's bespoke ADR which they merely hide in small print on one early unsolicited letter which impersonates a parking ticket, regarding which the accepted and informed advice for many years was to ignore. ParkingEye are well aware of this and they bank on consumers missing the very limited offer of appeal/POPLA and despite their assertion otherwise, they do not offer it again in other letters nor in their Letter before Claim. However, the British Parking Association, which is their Trade Body, are on record this year as being particularly keen for the authorities to recognise POPLA as the most suitable ADR and they actively encourage cases to be referred.

A POPLA decision will almost certainly resolve the case without need for court, within 90 days of the claimant issuing a POPLA verification code, whereas the Cambridge decision seems likely to go to the Court of Appeal according to a comment made at the April hearing by HHJ Moloney.

POPLA is my preferred ADR if the Court should allow an Order to this effect. In the interests of saving the court's time and resolving the matter fairly, I hereby agree to accept the findings of POPLA, even though in the normal course of events their decisions are not binding on a motorist.

Concluding statement of case for this claim to be stayed:

This is not about parking management nor the rights of any landowner - this is a vexatious litigant, and as a final alternative, I invite the court to strike this claim out.

This claimant has no standing or title in the land they ostensibly 'manage' at arm's length with remote cameras and they display an aggressive approach in their prolific forays in the small claims track. I draw the court's attention to this claimant's well-documented disregard for genuine customers of their principal clients, and to the disproportionate, scattergun defence bundle 'weighty tomes' submitted week in, week out, wasting courts time with irrelevant case law, in pursuit of winning some trophy cases, always at a loss. In a recent case at Aberystwyth in April 2014 (which was in the event, stayed pending the Cambridge decision) this claimant reportedly filed over 700 pages in their bundle about a retail car park where they had recently lost a claim, sending a paid solicitor at further cost, purely to attempt to win a case regarding a free customer car park where there was no initial or consequential loss to pursue and the 'PCN' sum claimed was £100. This claimant now routinely loses cases when properly defended and many English county courts have been swamped with this Claimant's paperwork, wholly disproportionate to the sum involved, since 2013.

Any victory using these methods is a Pyrrhic victory and an abuse of the small claims track. ParkingEye pay £200-£300 for their lawyers, making at least a £100 loss on the day. They further compound this by ordering transcripts of cases won for £200-£300, since hours of court time is taken up in some cases. This is a cleverly designed and orchestrated campaign to create a climate of intimidation. Using their transcripts and mentioning only the wins and never the losses they present a one-sided view of the true situation on their website, in their POPLA appeals, and in the documents used in any court cases. Judge Melville-Shreeve summed this up nicely in ParkingEye v Collins Daniel, case 3JD06533:

I submit that to proceed to a hearing yet again for this vexatious claimant is another waste of the court's time and should be avoided.

Umkomaas

You can forget paragraph (a) and ensuing text to it - there has been a decision from HHJ Moloney, and if you don't know the outcome of that, you don't want to. Just ditch para (a)!

Benjo816

thank you very much

4consumerrights

As stated above - if you had spent some time researching the forums - you would realise the cambridge point !!!!

You need more than that in your defence.

did you get a LBCC before the court papers or did you ignore those as well.


Have you acknowledge the claim stating you will defend in full.- THIS IS IMPORTANT TO DO FIRST.- within 14 days of service. You then have a total of 28 days FROM service to submit initial defence.

Parking Eye are trying new tactics to prevent further defence points being added - so IMO I would ensure all points are covered that you intend to rely upon.

You need to download the guides from Parking prankster

https://www.parking-prankster.com

and do a lot of reading.

Coupon-mad

Benjo816 wrote: »

I would still like to get this referred to popla.

Would that it was that simple. Everyone would prefer that but it happens rarely and NOT at this stage.

So is the letter I've copied below a good template to send to the judge?

Nope, you aren't at that stage! You need to read up as I have said about other cases and about how to write a defence. If you can't write a defence or read where I have pointed you to read, I suggest you complain to the retailer and make PE an offer of £25 or so to settle - because you will lose at court if you cannot suss from all the info available, what you must do to write a defence.

Please, re-read what we said above and start your few hours of reading with post #5 of the NEWBIES thread, get the Prankster's Guide for the price of a cup of coffee. Read LOTS of other cases (you cannot possibly have read them yet if you think that template is a defence). Please, please, read and learn what makes a decent defence and stop looking at irrelevant templates! You are setting yourself up to become another PE victim if you don't read where we've told you to look.