Found month old CCJ for Car accident - urgent help needed

OnanTheBarbarian

There is no need for your insurers to have been a 2nd Defendant in the proceedings, so no point raising that issue in your application.

Although you clearly were not served with the papers due to the change of address, unless the court got the documents returned by Royal Mail, the odds are it will still be deemed "good service" was effected. So you may struggle on that point.

The main issue a court are interested in when it comes to setting aside a judgment is whether there is a "triable issue" - meaning is there a genuine defence to the action brought against you and whether there could be a miscarriage of justice if the current outcome were to remain.

You have an argument (potentially) that there could be a miscarriage of justice and that there is a triable issue, although you mention that there could be 50% contributory negligence, so the weight of these arguments gets diminished slightly.

The length of time after the judgment was made compared to when the application is made is a considatory factor for the court. The longer it is, the less sympathy the court have. 4 months is starting to get a bit long in the tooth, but your argument is that you have acted as soon as you had knowledge of the judgment.

Taking a balanced view, given the above points and the fact your insurers will have by now settled the judgment amount in full and you had never pursued the other party for your losses or damages, I believe your application may fail, but it is worth the court fee to see if it will work, but I would not hold your breath.

You can complain also to your insurers about their handling of the matter as they have played a roll in matters and use the above advice from magpiecottage to use their complaints procedure and then the FOS if necessary.

The points to argue with your insurers is they will have most likely been put on notice of the proceedings before they were issued & served, could have nominated solicitors to accept service (which is a widely acknowledged practice within the industry), could have taken steps to obtain a letter from the Claimant's lawyers to confirm the judgment had been "satisfied" and filed this with the court, so the matter goes down as a "satisfied judgment" (but they may struggle to do this as they are not a nominated representative or on record as acting for you with the court)

Have a go and make some noises, but be ultimately prepared that you may not be able to get rid of this problem.

The only way I can think you could make this problem go away is to do the following:

1- Contact the Claimant's lawyers and explain what happened and say you want to do the following:

a) File an application to set aside the judgment
b) They file a consent order to your application agreeing to set the judgment aside - once this is done the court should rubber stamp the application and the judgment will be set aside - thus removing the record from your file.
c) The Claimant's solicitors then send a letter to the court to say the claim has been "settled" between the parties. This effectively closes the matter off with the court.

The above steps may be agreed by the lawyers, BUT you are asking them to drag an old file out of archives now and do work for no reward when they have no obligation to do so. They are within their rights to ask you to bear their costs, which could be circa £250 for this kind of caper. You would also have to pay the £50 consent order fee.

So have a chat with them and see what they say. DO that before firing off your N244

magpiecottage

Contact your insurance company in the first instance before incurring any expense.