Excel Parking, BW Legal and now what looks like court papers

Coupon-mad

Lamilad wrote: »

You should number every page in the file sequentially, from no. 1 right through to whatever the last page is. So you can say 'here you'll find on page 66 [a picture of Simon Renshaw-Smith being bludgeoned to death by Lamilad]'

:rotfl::rotfl:

Last night I made up a nice walkthrough of POF and how it applied to my case as a handy guide to refer to (and it helped me actually understand the flow). I was very proud of it even though it was only in a notepad document, however, saving it would have been a good idea as I went to bed late and woke up to a Locked up PC this morning... Oh dear, I left it all day but it didn't come back!...

Can you find it under recent documents?

Xanthanan

Coupon-mad wrote: »

Can you find it under recent documents?

No Im afraid not, it was an untitled notepad document, typed but never saved, if I had saved it somewhere along the line I would have been able to at least get the saved one back but alas, I'm bad at computering despite being 'in the trade' and was unlucky

Its a good test to go through the exercise again ... it will help me feel more confident when talking about the process in front of people that know legal stuff far better than I.

I also had 3 unsaved spreadsheets, 4 unsaved Word documents and around 20 browser windows / tabs open at the time. After the reset (I had to reboot to unfreeze the PC) I could recover the Word and Excel documents as saving backups is something they do automatically, the browser tabs can be found from history if needed but the notepad doc had fallen on the floor and all the 1's and 0's sank into the carpet.

Xanthanan

OK so the production of my witness statement and defence has progressed reasonably well over the last few weeks in my opinion, but it does all seem to be one fat document rather then two separate ones. Should the witness statement be short and to the point whereas the defence is more describing and introducing the 'arguments for the defence' before presenting evidence where applicable?

Its becoming more apparent that my defence is one of two halves and it should be all over in the first half...
1st Half, I wasn't the driver, they didn't use POFA. I have proof of both so I should win on this alone.
2nd Half (If necessary) Judge believes the Excel 'assumption' that I was the driver so I argue primarily on failures of CoP (they were BPA at the time) for grace periods (I'll be doing a video), lack of contract for loading / unloading activities and a few other lesser points. I don't see why I should need to argue about a scenario that didn't happen but it would be unfair for me to have no defence if I fail to convince the Judge I was working at hone when it all happened.

My court date arrived by post today, I am due to appear in early May giving me a couple more weeks to get the defence / WS / combined doc / whatever it ends up to be, into a reasonable state. Then I would be starting a cycle of getting feedback from you guys, amending / updating / representing & getting more feedback. This should allow me time to concentrate on printing / copying / mailing in the last couple of weeks in April as documents must be served 14 days before the hearing.

The letter from the court states the case is suitable for mediation and then explains how to use that service, it doesn't suggest what to do if I DONT want to use the service, I presume I just ignore it if I don't want to use it. I understand opinions amongst the forum regulars about the mediation service and how useful it is (or isn't) and the only outcome I would accept was a complete drop of the claim anyway.

I re-did that run through of how POFA worked for my case and its not bad (in my opinion). Is there anywhere I can put it for opinions without it being a bit too 'public' and in danger of prying eyes?

I've started looking at the case law point referenced in other defences that I can use and I have been confused by this from Lamilads transcript (Its very similar to my circumstances)

From Item 7 of Lamilads judgement transcript:
"R (on the application of Duff) v Secretary of State for Transport [2015] EWHC 1605. That decision states clearly that there is no presumption in law that the registered keeper of a vehicle is the driver."

Despite looking through it a number of times I cant see where it says that, even in a roundabout manner. Am I looking at the right document? (There are a few on pranksters case law pages) Is it that the language is too legal for my brain? How am I being so dim?

Other than that I seem to have found the relevant info for most of the other references in the various defence points from my original basic defence from last year.

Once I'm finished with the final defence / WS etc. where can I put it for comment or is it best directly passed around to a few helpful (if seriously overworked) forum veterans?

Coupon-mad

Should the witness statement be short and to the point whereas the defence is more describing and introducing the 'arguments for the defence' before presenting evidence where applicable?

Yes but it doesn't really matter in small claims as long as it is clear in bullet points, numbered and with numbered pages and line spaced for ease of reading.

Its becoming more apparent that my defence is one of two halves and it should be all over in the first half...
1st Half, I wasn't the driver, they didn't use POFA. I have proof of both so I should win on this alone.
2nd Half (If necessary) Judge believes the Excel 'assumption' that I was the driver so I argue primarily on failures of CoP (they were BPA at the time) for grace periods (I'll be doing a video), lack of contract for loading / unloading activities and a few other lesser points. I don't see why I should need to argue about a scenario that didn't happen but it would be unfair for me to have no defence if I fail to convince the Judge I was working at hone when it all happened.

I agree, that sounds like a good running plan.

From Item 7 of Lamilads judgement transcript:
"R (on the application of Duff) v Secretary of State for Transport [2015] EWHC 1605. That decision states clearly that there is no presumption in law that the registered keeper of a vehicle is the driver."

Despite looking through it a number of times I cant see where it says that, even in a roundabout manner. Am I looking at the right document? (There are a few on pranksters case law pages) Is it that the language is too legal for my brain? How am I being so dim?

You are not being dim, we couldn't understand it either! The Judge was in fact talking about Henry Greenslade's words from the POPLA Annual Report 2015, a page which lamilad included in his bundle. The POPLA Annual report page happens to have reference to "R (on the application of Duff) v Secretary of State for Transport [2015] EWHC 1605 as a note at the bottom and we think the Judge looked at that!

Lamilad

for grace periods (I'll be doing a video)

If you submitting a video as evidence then you'll need to ring the court and let them know so they can ensure the necessary equipment is made available for you to play it. They may tell you to bring the equipment such as a laptop. They'll also want to know the format - avi, mpeg4 etc.

And you'll still need to serve this evidence on BWL. An email attachment would obviously be the easiest way.

Xanthanan

Thank you both, that's helped settle the nerves again and helps me feel like I'm on the right track. I did start to break the wall of text into two separate documents so I will keep on with that and see how it looks once its done.

I plan to do a fully timed transcript of the video as well as having it ready to show (after arranging facilities with the court as necessary) but I really hope that the transcript and timings within it should be convincing enough without sitting through what will most likely be a rather amateur production. I'll be more than happy to show it, but what a waste of time it would be when its all neatly summarised on a piece of A4.

claretmad62

Page 13 on the 2015 Popla annual report, last paragraph and note at the end of the page if you were still searching...

Xanthanan

Thank you Claretmad62, I now see the note applied to the bottom of page 13 about "The Queen (on the application of Duff) -v- Secretary of State for Transport [2015] EWHC 1605 (Admin)". The section in the main body of the report that it refers to makes perfect sense to me now having read that darn long judgement at least 3 times!! lol

I am using extracts from pages 12 and 13 both for keeper (and hirer) liability as well as the 'presumption' of the driver in my defence thanks to all of the brilliant guidance given earlier in the thread.

Xanthanan

Xanthanan wrote: »

I plan to do a fully timed transcript of the video as well as having it ready to show (after arranging facilities with the court as necessary) but I really hope that the transcript and timings within it should be convincing enough without sitting through what will most likely be a rather amateur production. I'll be more than happy to show it, but what a waste of time it would be when its all neatly summarised on a piece of A4.

So I did the recording over the weekend and ended up with a video and transcript that shows it takes considerably longer than Excel allow in their signs. I used a 7 day free trial of Adobe Premier pro to edit the video and its done a nice job to say I'd never done that before (I may have enjoyed doing that a bit TOO much!). I also learnt the following from watching the video too many times during the editing...

1. I'm terribly rude to my other half, especially as she was an unpaid helper doing it from the goodness of her heart. I don't talk to her very nicely and never realised that before
2. I will never be an actor or a TV presenter, too ugly and forgetful!
3. It takes quite a time to walk around a pretty small car park and read all of the signs. I ignored duplicates and read / walked at a reasonable pace.

So is this video something that must be kept secret (at least until after the hearing) or can I upload it somewhere without making it invalid as evidence?

I'd also like to upload WS, defence doc and various other homemade exhibits (like that POFA run through) for comment but want to avoid doing anything that may be deemed wrong in the courts eyes.

Lamilad

Xanthanan wrote: »

So this video something that must be kept secret (at least until after the hearing) or can I upload it somewhere without making it invalid as evidence?

I'd also like to upload WS, defence doc and various other homemade exhibits (like that POFA run through) for comment but want to avoid doing anything that may be deemed wrong in the courts eyes.

You cannot upload anything here as it's not a hosting site but you can upload to Dropbox and post links.

It's fine for you to do this. It will not make anything inadmissable. There's a possibility the PPC could see it as they have spies on the forums but it's nothing they're not going to see anyway.