Turning the tables- suing a PPC

Gadfium

Has anyone any experience of claiming money of a PPC following a succesful appeal?
My thoughts are that if an appeal was made to a PPC that the PPC turned down and that point then won a POPLA appeal then the PPC could be liable for costs? After all, they initiated the process and the innocent party incurred costs (maybe only time, but compensable nevertheless).

Thoughts?

Half_way

Turn the tables right over, why not go for the car park owner?
After all who ever/what ever initiated the whole process by allowing a PPC to operate in their name and/ or as their agents

Gadfium

Half_way wrote: »

Turn the tables right over, why not go for the car park owner?
After all who ever/what ever initiated the whole process by allowing a PPC to operate in their name and/ or as their agents

Not a bad idea. However, it is the PPC that declines appeal that are later shown to be valid.
Perhaps the agent and the contractor of that agent are jointly liable?

The_Deep

I do not see why such a claim should not succeed, especially if the amount is small. I once sued an Amazon partner for £130 plus costs. They settled before it got to court, I expect that many PPCs would do likewise to avoid the publicity.

Here are a couple where the biter got bitten.

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?377246-UKPC-liable-for-trespass-**SUCCESS**

http://www.miltonkeynes.co.uk/news/milton-keynes-woman-secures-landmark-victory-for-flat-tenants-in-parking-dispute-1-7459066

beamerguy

I see no reason why you should not summon a PPC to court to explain why they rejected the appeal yet an independent body like POPLA overturned the decision.
A court would surely accept that the evidence given by POPLA was the correct version. A dodgy one for the PPC to explain away

Your costs for having the need to defend this

Anyone can take anybody to court with the right evidence

bargepole

beamerguy wrote: »

... Your costs for having the need to defend this

Anyone can take anybody to court with the right evidence

They can, but the claim has to have some substance to it, and identify a cause of action.

Most appeals to PPCs, and POPLA, are done online, and don't take very long to do. Your quantifiable costs would be negligible, and if you tried to hold the PPC contractually liable in your initial appeal, they will most likely respond that they don't agree to those terms.

So I think it unlikely that such a claim would succeed - one or two people we know of have got them to pay up, but many others have tried and failed.

Gadfium

bargepole wrote: »

They can, but the claim has to have some substance to it, and identify a cause of action.

Most appeals to PPCs, and POPLA, are done online, and don't take very long to do. Your quantifiable costs would be negligible, and if you tried to hold the PPC contractually liable in your initial appeal, they will most likely respond that they don't agree to those terms.

So I think it unlikely that such a claim would succeed - one or two people we know of have got them to pay up, but many others have tried and failed.

Interesting and thanks for taking the time to reply.
Do you have any links to cases that succeeded or failed?

Herzlos

bargepole wrote: »

Most appeals to PPCs, and POPLA, are done online, and don't take very long to do. Your quantifiable costs would be negligible, and if you tried to hold the PPC contractually liable in your initial appeal, they will most likely respond that they don't agree to those terms.

I dunno, I think for most people it takes hours of research before trying to write an appeal; I think it's unlikely that they'll stumble across the guide and template text quickly.

TDA

The_Deep wrote: »

I do not see why such a claim should not succeed, especially if the amount is small. I once sued an Amazon partner for £130 plus costs. They settled before it got to court, I expect that many PPCs would do likewise to avoid the publicity.

Here are a couple where the biter got bitten.

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?377246-UKPC-liable-for-trespass-**SUCCESS**

http://www.miltonkeynes.co.uk/news/milton-keynes-woman-secures-landmark-victory-for-flat-tenants-in-parking-dispute-1-7459066

The most obvious reason why such a claim will typically not succeed is that there is no recognised cause of action in English law for your time spent resolving a dispute. The cases you cite were built off the back off separate causes of action (the tort of trespass for instance). To allow such claims would open the floodgates of litigation.

The whole point of ADR, such as POPLA, is to reduce the administrative burden on the court. If judges were to start awarding costs at hearings to people who successfully engaged in ADR then the purpose of the same is somewhat defeated.

Herzlos

We're not talking about claiming costs back for ADR; we're talking about claiming costs back for being forced to go to ADR unnecessarily, where the same arguments were made at initial appeal and ADR, and the initial appeal was rejected.

TDA

Herzlos wrote: »

We're not talking about claiming costs back for ADR; we're talking about claiming costs back for being forced to go to ADR unnecessarily, where the same arguments were made at initial appeal and ADR, and the initial appeal was rejected.

Which amounts to the exact same thing in practice. You're still asking the court to award costs for a situation that has already been resolved in your favour at ADR - the entire purpose of which is to avoid taking up the courts time!

In any event, no costs exist to claim back. The only party that has suffered costs as a result of an appeal to POPLA is the operator. Do you believe that a PPC have a legal right to be able to claim costs when they have a POPLA appeal upheld in their favour?

As I've explained above you cannot claim costs simply for your time, absent any other cause of action.