ES Enforcement County Court Claim

System

Well done. Huddersfield is not such a bad place.

C-M case ends on 6Z. Judge was down as DDJ Glenday and there was another case (Euro PS) too.

Dot2101

Thank you for all of your good wishes, I am so relieved that my case was a sucess!

So here is my report of how the day went... its long but as you may know I am not one for shortening things down!

We were scheduled in for 2pm, we arrived at 1.20pm with lay rep law in hand. I spoke to the usher and mentioned that I would be my partners lay rep. Didn’t seem to be an issue, they wrote my name next to Mr McBrides.

We waited in the waiting room and at 1.55pm their representative turned up, he asked to speak to Mr McBride. He said hello and that he had just received our skeleton argument and thanked us for sending this. I mentioned that I had sent this last Wednesday to Gladstones and sent 3 emails to check they had received. He laughed and said they are quite last minute and that "hopefully this won't take long".

We went into the room, the judge was infront of us and we were offered to seat at a long table.
The judge asked if we had both received eachothers papers, we both stated that we had.

The Claimants rep
Mr Pickup began speaking, the judge kept stopping him to probe for further questions.
His main point was that the vehicle was pictured not been within the confines of a parking bay and that you could see within the photographic evidence of the vehicle that there was a sign closeby. The judge said “if I was in that red car (a car behind ours) I wouldn’t be able to read that sign” he stumbled at this point and didn’t have much to say about this. He moved on to what the actual sign states “all vehicles must be parked wholly within the confines of a marked parking bay” she carried on saying yes but this cannot be read.

My favourite moment was when she asked him to point out where the vehicle was positioned by Next according to the site plan supplied by ES. Mr Pickup could not do this because the site plan was incorrect, it showed Next next door to Pizza Hut, so he pointed there. Perhaps she was familiar with the site but she seemed to know that he was incorrect and probed him to confirm that he knew exactly where the car was postioned. He said he could not. This seemed to annoy her.

He brought up that the car was on double yellow lines. She asked if the land is private land, he said yes but lines such as bays, disabled signs, yellow lines are on public roads and there to imply the same rulings. She disagreed with this and said you cannot imply, they are not enforceable.

She then pointed out that the vehicle was photographed between 11.44 and 11.45, he said well yes but how can you go into a shop, shop around, que up and pay all within 2 minutes. She shrugged this off and said well maybe, your evidence cannot prove otherwise and you cannot assume.

She then went on and said to a fashion ”I don’t want to steal the glory from the defendant but there is a letter from the landowner (she quoted a few sentences) who does not support this been brought to court. Mr Pickup stated that this was dated 22nd March which was after proceedings had begun to taking this to court and that they had tried to get in touch with the defendant on 3 occasions with no response so they felt they had to begin court proceedings and that there was no evidence that she has been in touch before this time, in which there was no longer a contract between ES and the landowner. At this point I tried to say something but was told not to speak (I was desperate to say that I had sent a letter to appeal, just not through the IPC!)

The Defendant
It was then my turn. I felt quite flustered and she told me several times to slow down to allow her to find the exhibit that I was referring to. Thinking back there was so much that I missed but from what I could tell she had already thoroughly read everything that I had sent in and seemed very clued up. I can’t fully remember the order in which everything was mentioned but here goes;

1) I know that I began with that the initial letter sent and the particulars of claim stated “parking charges” I contested that the vehicle was not parked, it was stopped. I referred to Jopson v Homeguard definition of parking and that it had been ruled that the vehicle which in this instance was unloading a car was stopped for a matter of minutes and the judge ruled that this had not been parked and that in our case the car was stopped with the hazards on and a person in the vehicle for less than 2 minutes according to the evidence submitted by ES.

2) I said that the signs could not form a contract and asked them to look over the photographs that I had taken in the position of the car and stated that the signs were far too small to be read from the insides of a vehicle so it would be impossible to understand that should not be stopped in that position and should be in a marked bay. I also had a copy of the sign up close but she said she didn’t have a copy of this in her exhibits so it could not be mentioned (she gave me the exhibits back and later saw that there was a copy of the sign but hey ho) I pressed further to say that the copy of the sign given by ES was so small that if the driver did need to understand them they would need to vacate the car and leave it unattended to walk up to the sign to read it. (at this point I wish I had mentioned Vine v Waltham forest but forgot)

3) As the vehicle was only stopped for 2 minutes they had not followed the grace period of 20 minutes as agreed with the landowner. I then highlighted that the signs that feature the IPC logo, suggesting they are linked. I mentioned part B 15.1 of the IPC code of practice regarding grace periods and that the driver should be allowed time to understand the contract so that they may make an informed decision… coming back to again I couldn’t read the signage.

4) I then moved on to Part B – part 14 predatory tactics. I commented that the way the photos had been taken it was clear that a person had taken the photos and this person could have informed us that we should not be stopped here and that parking companies should be mitigating the losses to a landowner and cited my exhibit transcript of Ibbotsen. The judge said she needed to be persuaded with this as it wasn’t case law so I cited page 8 of the transcript where it says the parking attendant could have told the driver you can stay parked here but if you do I will have to charge you £80. I said the person who took the photos could have done this and if they had we would have never ended up in court and all this could be avoided.

5) I then pointed out that I felt that ES were re-using witness statements and not actually considering each case. I used their point of suggesting that lighting would not be an issue. I had never mentioned this and why would lighting be an issue on a July morning realistically. The judge seemed to agree with this. I explained that I had sent a letter in response to their PCN although not through IPC but I hadn’t received a response. I pointed out that as the POC only stated “parking charges” which then meant I had to research lots of different eventualities, and as someone that is untrained this was very time consuming.


The Verdict

There was some back and forth about some of the above points with Mr Pickup but then the judge made her decision. It was in our favour.

I cannot remember the order of what she picked out but it was basically
1) This was only 2 minutes of stopping, and it was a stopping instance not parking as described and this was supported by exhibits given by the defendant.
2) The rep could not pick out where the vehicle had been stopped on the site plan.
3) The signs are too far away to be read and understood from where the vehicle was stopped.
4) Predatory tactics had been used and that they should have been looking to mitigate costs to the landowner

She did mention Beavis and pointed out that neither of us had mentioned this but that Beavis did not apply in this case as it was stopping rather than parking.

She commented that this was a very “plain” case and that following photographic evidence it should have been clear that no grace period had been given and it was generally agreed that this should be 10 minutes and she generally implied that following the defences and witness statements ES should have used the opportunity to not bring this case to court.

Costs
She asked if there was anything else that needed to be discussed. I asked if this would be about costs which she confirmed that now was the opportunity to ask for costs and that we should first look into Ordinary costs. … This is where I should have been more prepared.

As the case was at 2pm she asked who was taking costs for leave, I said Mr McBride was. She asked what his job is, he stated “kitchen fitter”. She said so your costs are half a day, we both then explained that no he had taken a full day off. She didn’t seem to like this. Mr McBride explained that he generally works over in York or Hull dependant on what the schedule is and that it would be impossible to get back over in time from working half a day. She asked if he had asked to work half a day more locally, he stated yes but that the work was in Hull that day. She seemed to settle on this.

She asked about car parking, we had stated £5. I said it was actually £3 in the car park that we had found and used. She adjusted the costs. She agreed that the mileage sounded right (we had travelled from Halifax to Huddersfield)

She then said that unreasonable costs are not usually considered in small claims and why did I feel that the Claimant had acted unreasonably. She read the rule 27.14 and advised that it doesn’t state what is “unreasonable” so I would need to explain why I felt they had acted unreasonably.

My reasons were that all of this could have been avoided if the person taking the pictures had told Mr McBride that he could not stop where he was and that if no bays are available then you should leave the car park. I contested that I had sent a letter to appeal and ask questions but this was never responded to which meant that when I received court papers with limited PoC I was having to undertake a lot of research which was time consuming. I stated that I am not trained so it was stressful and difficult to understand things that I was not familiar with and that as I knew the costs had risen so dramatically with no explanation that I needed to make sure that I was doing a good job and make a strong defence to ensure that I didn’t end up landed with these costs.

Mr Pickup said that although it was my research and efforts this was not Mr McBrides, she didn’t seem to care about this point.

She said that she would give me some of the costs but not all of the costs. She did not give stationary and printing costs as this is part of defending a case (I hadn’t provided receipts) and that she would not give me the 5 hours that I had requested for research. She said I could only take time from the witness statement to entering court for the costs (I didn’t think this was the case?!) I said 4 hours which she said why do you think 4. I said I hadn’t timed myself but I had made a skeleton argument since receiving the witness statement and this involved reading through their witness statement, researching their arguments and formulating my own arguments in response. I also mentioned that printing and putting all the exhibits together took some time. She settled on giving us 3 hours.

She ended with adding up the costs and calculated that ES would need to pay us £158.10 and that she would allow a little more time because of Easter but that they would need to pay us by 4pm on the 21st April.
Mr Pick up asked for some wording to be added (sorry I didn’t catch what this was) but she agreed that it was a fair point and that it would make it clearer.

She thanked us and gave me my documents back and that was it!

On our way out Mr Pick up certainly didn’t seem like he needed picking up… he seemed fairly cheerful and said fair play and that we had been very diplomatic and that we had some good arguments. I asked him if he worked for Gladstones and he said no he was just hired in for the day.

1 question that I thought afterwards… will ES send a cheque to pay the £158.10, I never asked. And what happens if we don’t receive this by the 21st?

Finally.
Thank you to everyone on this site who has supported me along the way, checking through my defense and witness statement… I would have struggled without this. Finally a shoutout to Anne Q. who had a case with ES in Manchester back in January. She sent me her defense, her witness statement and skeleton which helped me with mine. I am happy to send mine to anyone who is dealing with a similar case.

Umkomaas

Super report and super win. Really pleased for you. :T

Lamilad

Brilliant report, very informative, well done. I will link people to this thread to give them an idea of what to expect in court.

1 question that I thought afterwards… will ES send a cheque to pay the £158.10, I never asked. And what happens if we don’t receive this by the 21st?

Glad you asked

On the day after the deadline you go back to the court in person with the judge's order (which you will receive in the post in a few days)

You apply for a 'warrant of control'. It costs £110 which is added to their bill. The court will then send baliffs to the HQ to collect payment or remove goods to the value.

I missed my chance to sting Excel with this. So hopefully you'll be quicker off the mark

Edit: yes it will be a cheque

Lamilad

Poor Mr Pickup, he must hate these forums ��

DoaM

Lamilad wrote: »

Poor Mr Pickup

???

Dot2101

Thank you I really hope it will help someone else.

Thanks for info about info about warrant of control I will be sure to keep a close eye on the post
!
To be fair Mr Pickup seemed fine, I think he knew that he was screwed from the offset and luckily for us the judge was very savvy and had thoroughly read all of my documents so she was firing back at him.

She had made her decision within half an hour then going through costs took just under 15 minutes

:j

Lamilad wrote: »

Brilliant report, very informative, well done. I will link people to this thread to give them an idea of what to expect in court.


Glad you asked

On the day after the deadline you go back to the court in person with the judge's order (which you will receive in the post in a few days)

You apply for a 'warrant of control'. It costs £110 which is added to their bill. The court will then send baliffs to the HQ to collect payment or remove goods to the value.

I missed my chance to sting Excel with this. So hopefully you'll be quicker off the mark

Edit: yes it will be a cheque

Coupon-mad

Another fun day out for Mr Pickup then! Well done, Dot2101. Nice job, a good report and the costs were more than most get.

http://parking-prankster.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/mr-pickups-fun-day-out.html

Lamilad met him too, in that case!

Lamilad

I think he knew that he was screwed from the offset

Mr Pickup is well known on the forums.

He's been screwed that many times in court by forum assisted defendants that he's probably used to and just thinks "sod it, I've lost so may as well just keep smiling"

He'll have known you were forum assisted as soon as he received your bundle. And at that point he knew he'd lost.

He still gets paid though which probably made it easier to keep smiling.... He should do TV adverts for Hamlet Cigars

Umkomaas

He's been screwed that many times in court by forum assisted defendants that he's probably used to and just thinks "sod it, I've lost so may as well just [STRIKE]keep smiling and[/STRIKE] collect (pickup!) my cheque"

Fixed that for you Lami.