ES Parking Enforcement

meagainin

Brilliant news!

Coupon-mad

billinghamn wrote: »

Quick update: Gladstones pulled out at the (very) last minute. Will provide a more detailed update later including exactly what happened re claiming costs.


Glad it's over...

Great stuff, another one bites the dust!

Please give us a full report, and about the costs!

claxtome

Also interested to know what happened about your counterclaim?

billinghamn

Here's my quick write up of prep and the hearing itself yesterday. I may end up editing this later on once my wife has chance to review it.

Final Arrangements for the Hearing
I personally hand delivered a copy of the Defendant's Bundle to St Helen's County Court (SHCC) on Monday at lunchtime. The court official said it would be included in the drop box, but evidently the Judge did not receive, nor review it, ahead of the court hearing.

We had attempted to email a copy of the Defendant's Bundle to Gladstones for a week prior to the hearing. We couldn't get any emails through (even dummy emails) – Gladstones had an email server problem that they were aware of. So, I decided, for the sake of being fair, to hand deliver a copy of the Defendant's Bundle to Gladstones office in High Legh on Monday afternoon.

I also took three copies of the Defendant's Bundle to the hearing: one for us and two spare copies. That meant that I had prepared 5 copies of the Defendant's Bundle – each pack containing over 75 pages. Three copies were nicely indexed with document separators, and the final two spare copies had no document separators.

Attending Court
We arrived at court about 45 mins before the hearing and after a basic security check, we were directed upstairs to a reception area. Upstairs there are 5 courts with 2 different receptions areas: Reception 1 looks after Courts 1 and 2. Reception 2 looks after Courts 3, 4 and 5. The two reception areas are separated by a door and there are a number of small interview rooms which parties use to negotiate before attending their hearing. We arrived at around 1:15pm and the place was empty – no one manning the reception desks. We sat down in Reception Area 1 – it felt a bit like a Doctor's waiting room. It was very warm and they had a large fan blowing to keep people cool – although it wasn't that effective.

The list of hearings/timings were available on a notice board in both reception areas. There were 10 cases listed in Court 4 at 2pm (including ours), so there was a clear expectation that some of them would be settled out of court. Otherwise the court session would be a long one!

A few mins after we arrived, a young lady introduced herself as the Gladstones representative – Ms S. She invited us in to a small interview room in Reception Area 2 to have a quick chat, where she explained the process and asked if we had any questions. This seemed a little unusual since she was our opponent for the day. We wondered whether this was a tactic to see how well prepared we were.

It also became clear that although she had a copy of our Defence and Witness Statements, she had not been provided with a copy of the Defendant's Bundle that I dropped off with Gladstones on Monday. Perhaps naively, I offered her one of our spare copies. We were in the room only a few mins but agreed both parties would look out for the usher. We walked through to Reception Area 1, whilst she remained in Reception Area 2.

Pre-Hearing Negotiations
We waited for around 15 mins, and we both wandered through into Reception Area 2 a few times to see whether there was any movement. During this time other parties arrived (involved in their own cases). It was at this point that we noticed that Ms S was back in the interview room on the phone. She had been reviewing our Defendant's Bundle and was talking to someone about it. We deduced that she was talking to Gladstones and taking advice.

Eventually the court usher arrived and we made her aware of our presence. We also noted that Ms S had arrived to represent the Claimant. We hoped this would get us to the top of the list, highlighting that we were both ready for court.

Close to 2pm, Ms S invited us back in to the Interview room again. This time to advise us that Gladstones intended on discontinuing the case. Apparently that decision had been taken the previous day, but they had not made her aware. She advised that she would only be attending the hearing if we planned to continue with the counter-claim. We confirmed that we had no desire to follow up on the counter-claim if the Claimant was dropping the original claim. Ms S was hoping that we could all walk away, but we raised the point about costs. Ms S agreed to ring Gladstones to discuss the matter.

About 5 mins later, we had a follow-on conversation and she confirmed that Gladstones were prepared to cover the counter-claim court fee (£35) and the time for attending court (£48). We insisted on the full amount which also included return mileage and parking (extra £14), and then also further costs for unreasonable behaviour (£129). We agreed we needed to see the judge to review the level of costs to be awarded.

The Hearing
About 15 mins later at around 2:15pm, we were called in to Court 5 which looked a little more like a proper court than we were expecting. It certainly wasn't an office desk around which all parties sat and discussed the case! The Judge was already there but didn't specifically introduce himself.

The Judge wasn't desperately friendly and certainly didn't explain court proceedings or support us as lay people. We were quite surprised by this based on the info we had ascertained before attending court. It was supposed to be friendly, and very informal. Not so.

The Judge invited Ms S (as the one legal rep in court) to appraise him of the current position. We agreed that the only point of contention was that of costs.

The Judge started with the Ordinary Costs and put the onus on the Claimant to explain why the return mileage and parking costs should not be paid by the Claimant. He fairly quickly concluded that these should be paid. So, we had earned an extra £14.

The Judge then went on to talk about the further costs for unreasonable behaviour, and I realised it was on us to justify why we considered the Claimant to have acted unreasonably. I didn't expect this – I assumed the costs were a done deal. I had prepared my arguments in the context of our Skeleton Argument and the main case, but to be honest I hadn't done anything in respect to preparing to justify our costs. Big lesson for next time!

At this point my wife raised a request for me to speak on behalf of her, and the Judge referred to his notes, but accepted that the Defendant chose to be represented by her husband. He didn't seem entirely chuffed at this prospect and did ask whether the Defendant couldn't speak for herself. My wife explained that I had prepared her defence and it made sense for me to speak on her behalf. He agreed this was her right, and that was the approach we would take. Note that she couldn't speak at all beyond that point – the Judge only wanted to hear from one person from the Defence team.

I started off by highlighting that the Claimant had no cause for action. Initial focus was on the photographic evidence provided by the Claimant. The clearest photo recommended by Ms S wasn't clear at all and had no evidence that it was even of the Defendant's vehicle. Although the Judge agreed the photo wasn't desperately clear, he failed to accept the point about the lack of the vehicle registration plate, just noting that it would be difficult to include the registration plate when the photo was of the dashboard.

The next point I raised, in respect to the Claimant not having any cause for action, was in respect to whether the Claimant had a right under the parking contract. I suggested that there was no direct link from the landowner to the company with which the parking contract was held. I highlighted that the parking contract was in the company name of Total CarPark Solutions, and that there was no evidence that this company existed. I referred the judge to a search of Companies House and this confirmed it did not exist. I went on to talk about the 4 parcels of land, and the land searches. Unfortunately, the Judge questioned how he would understand how these parcels of land related to Winwick Road and the car park in question. He asked whether I had a map and although I had included a simple map of the car park, I had to accept that I didn't have a map that clearly showed the parcels of land, and how they related to the car park and the roads that are referred to in the land searches.

I got a feeling this wasn't going our way, so I questioned whether the Claimant could provide evidence that the Claimant had the right to charge for parking. The judge asked Ms S whether the Claimant had the right, and she answered yes. The Judge seemed to accept this without challenge. That seemed to end that line of discussion.

I then attempted to raise the question of whether the Claimant used the DVLA Registered Keeper data in line with KADOE rules, but he wasn't interested in hearing that argument. He closed me down very quickly – I don't know whether he thought I was chancing my arm or something.

In concluding the evidence provided in support of the unreasonable behaviour costs, the Judge referred to a previous case, which emphasized that the fact that a claim was not successful did not mean that the Claimant had acted unreasonably, and costs awarded against the Claimant should not deter future valid claims. Out went our claim for the extra £129.

At times the Judge became frustrated at the lack of knowledge of the case by Ms S, and lack of easily accessible evidence that he could refer to. That was when it became apparent that he had not received a copy of the Defendant's Bundle and I needed to provide him with another copy. Unfortunately, this one didn't include all the separators, so even that was a bone of contention for him.

The Judge summed up his decision at the end, and suggested the costs of £97 needed to be paid within 2 weeks.

Considering the effort that we had invested in preparing our defence and the hand delivering of the material to the various parties, it felt like it wasn't appreciated in the slightest. The Judge paid very little attention to the information that was available to him, and he was keen to conclude proceedings as quickly as possible. I can't say we were desperately impressed to be honest.

Summary
So, in the end we spent 60 mins in the hearing to earn ourselves an additional £14! Ms S was very articulate, very friendly and seemed to be pretty well prepared. Her parting words to us were to summarise the outcome of the hearing, and that if we didn't receive payment after 2 weeks, that we should follow this up. That was a clear indication that she didn't expect the Claimant to pay our costs.

Overall, it was a great life experience. However, not one that either of us would want to go through again.

Umkomaas

Superb report @billinghamn. A win is a win, you've stopped them from raiding your wallet (or your wife's purse) and had a little dip into theirs in the process - and Gladstones will now be taking their cut from them too - for losing the case!

Gladstones never lose, no matter what the outcome!

Coupon-mad

Well done, a win is win! :T

System

It's a win in the casino known as the Small Claims Court.

Compare it with this one

£659 costs awarded against Gemini Parking

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5867387/659-costs-awarded-against-gemini-parking