Urgent advice kindly requested - County Claim (Gladstone Solicitors)

Kamran

Here's what my costs schedule looks like:

XXX County Court
Case Number: XXX
Hearing date: XX Feb 2018

Defendant: XXX
Vs
Claimant: Parking & Property Management LTD / Gladstones Solicitors LTD


DEFENDANT’S SCHEDULE OF COSTS


Ordinary Costs


Loss of leave, incurred through attendance at Court XX/02/2018, £95.00

Return mileage from home address to Court (e.g. 43 miles x £0.45) £19.35

Parking near Court £5.00

Sub-total £119.35


Further costs for Claimant’s unreasonable behaviour, pursuant to Civil Procedure Rule 27.14(2)(g)

Research, preparation and drafting of documents (3 hours at Litigant in Person rate of £19 per hour) £57.00

Stationery, printing, photocopying and postage: £15.00

Sub-total £72.00



£ 191.35 = TOTAL COSTS CLAIMED

Lamilad

The claimant states in point 5 that the signs on the land are clear and unambiguous, [STRIKE]which is laughable and I strongly disagree.[/STRIKE] This is denied

The claimant is a member of the International Parking Community and [STRIKE]by doing so[/STRIKE], as such, agree to adhere to their standards.

Kamran

Thanks all for your help - I'll be doing my final printing / emailing today.

1) Does my cost schedule below look reasonable?
2) From a high level, is my SA structured appropriately?
3) When it comes to rights of audience, do I just ask the judge on entering the courtroom, to clarify rights of audience? I found myself getting very confused on the Newbies FAQ thread on this.

Thank you for all your help so far!
:T

Kamran wrote: »

Here's what my costs schedule looks like:

XXX County Court
Case Number: XXX
Hearing date: XX Feb 2018

Defendant: XXX
Vs
Claimant: Parking & Property Management LTD / Gladstones Solicitors LTD


DEFENDANT!!!8217;S SCHEDULE OF COSTS


Ordinary Costs


Loss of leave, incurred through attendance at Court XX/02/2018, £95.00

Return mileage from home address to Court (e.g. 43 miles x £0.45) £19.35

Parking near Court £5.00

Sub-total £119.35


Further costs for Claimant!!!8217;s unreasonable behaviour, pursuant to Civil Procedure Rule 27.14(2)(g)

Research, preparation and drafting of documents (3 hours at Litigant in Person rate of £19 per hour) £57.00

Stationery, printing, photocopying and postage: £15.00

Sub-total £72.00



£ 191.35 = TOTAL COSTS CLAIMED

Coupon-mad

1) Does my cost schedule below look reasonable?

IMHO, yes.

2) From a high level, is my SA structured appropriately?

Looks OK, its purpose being to structure the defence points to assist the court. And it will help you to stay focussed.

3) When it comes to rights of audience, do I just ask the judge on entering the courtroom, to clarify rights of audience? I found myself getting very confused on the Newbies FAQ thread on this.

You should aim to get there half on hour early, and hand over to the Usher, a copy of the Law Gazette article and relevant case law printed out, and tell them that you wish the issue of Rights of Audience to be questioned as a preliminary matter. Press this a little, even if the Judge says that he/she knows the rep ''they've been here to this court many times before''.

So what really! That was said by the Brighton Judge on Publican Paul's case on pepipoo...who then read the case law & article and did throw the rep out within 5 minutes, as he found that they had no RoA!

State that as the rep is neither an employee of Gladstones, nor an employee of the claimant, they have no Rights of Audience, going by the case law and Law Gazette article and you seek the Judge's opinion on this, regardless of whether the rep has been there before.

Of the Judge looks at you like you have two heads, then move on to your next point politely 'OK, if you are not with me on that matter, I would like to raise matters of my defence and issues with the veracity of the Claimant's Witness Statement' which was written by a person who:

- was not a witness to the alleged parking event
- has never been to the car park site in question
- has never seen the signs (if any) and is not in a position to comment on what terms were displayed
- has not turned up today to be questioned, so less weight should be given to this statement.

claxtome

Good luck today.
The regulars on here are routing for you and know what you are going through.
Try and remain calm.

bargepole

You've got a good Judge hearing the case. DJ Coonan was the one involved in both PACE v Noor hearings. These are obviously different circumstances, but she will give both sides a fair hearing.

In the County Court and the Family Court at Croydon
Friday 2 February 2018
Before District Judge Coonan

10:00 AM
D0GF1V96 PARKING & PROPERTY MANAGEMENT LIMITED -v- MIRZA 1. 5 HOUR S/C

muleskinner

Yeah, good luck and let us know how it goes!

nosferatu1001

Good luck!

Kamran

Thanks - we won!

Dear all, I just want to say a big thank you to all of you for your help and inputs - it was a success and the case was dismissed. Specifically I'd like to thank (in no particular order) muleskinner, claxtome, umkomaas, nosferatu1001, castle, coupon-mad, thedeep, bargepole, Lamilad and anyone else who's contributed to the Newbies threads.

Summary

• The case was dismissed on the basis of inadequate signage, which was by far my strongest defence. The photo evidence more or less spoke for itself.
• Having said that it was a success, it wasn't the whitewash that I was expecting - many of the points I was thinking would be a walkover, actually didn't go in my favour.
• I found it slightly gruelling and in fact the whole process was quite unpleasant! (first time doing anything like this)!

Immediate Questions

1. Their lawyer made reference to making an appeal, which was immediate rejected by the judge. She then offered that it could go to some sort of higher court - is this something that's common, or just talk? Can I (in all probability) consider the matter settled?
2. In the judge's rush to get us out after she made her decision, I totally forgot to bring up my costs schedule (exhaustion / euphoria), which both the court and the claimant had been served the night before. Presumably I can apply for this retrospectively, but what's the process from here?

Logistics

• I arrived at the court 45mins before and found the usher to submit my SA and cost schedule, as well as Rights of Audience doc. She wasn't massively helpful tbh.
• The claimant's lawyer tried to be friendly before the case, but I tried to be a little cold as I was suspicious. He made the point that we had both read each other's Witness Statements, and now it was down to the judge to interpret.
• We waiting around for what seemed like forever, my case started 90mins late approx, and lasted a full 90mins I think.

Right of Audience

This landed flat on its face as even though he was a self-employed lawyer acting as an agent on behalf of the claimant, the judge didn't see an issue with that, even though she had the law gazette article in her hand. I decided to not overly press the issue as she seemed quite certain.

The Plea

• I was chufffed at the start, as the judge (lovely lady, as bargepole mentioned) sort of went to town on their lawyer in not making clear what the basis of the charge was. Was it trespass, breach of contract, or parking charge? He fumbled around quite a lot as his papers said multiple different things, but settled on a parking charge.
• The signage on site states parking consideration of £100 so it was deemed that the charge was for that.
• Their side got a bit of stick for not submitting a clear breakdown of charges and how the extra £60 came about
• I found myself in the difficult position of saying that as a lay person I found it all confusing - I initially thought it was a parking penalty, but only last week after seeing a close up of their signs and their WS, that it was in fact a £100 parking fee. Judge agreed that it wasn't immediately clear, but agreed that it was a parking charge.

Beavis Case

The judge basically went on to discuss the differences between our and the Beavis case and concluded that the Beavis case was different inherently as

1. it was a customer car park and people were invited to park for free for 2-4hours
2. we had by then established that the signage on site charged the £100 as a parking consideration, as opposed to a penalty charge like in Beavis.

PPM's contract with the landowner

This didn't quite go as I had planned.

• I was making the point that their contract states that permit holders only and that they don't have the owner's permission to charge for services.
• Their side argued that it doesn't matter, because the signage was clear and by offering parking they were acting within the norms of common industry practice.
• The £100 was deemed "reasonable" and the judge read Lord Justice Lewison's words in VCS vs HM revenue & customs 2013 - the summary being that it's none of the motorist's business what the nature of the relationship is between landowner and parking management company, and that the charges were reasonable for not displaying a permit. I kind of see this as a loophole where parking companies can get away with charging up to £100 to motorists and hide behind this, but anyway we moved on.

Inadequate Signage

This is where the case was won, and the evidence was quite definitive.

• The judge stated that it is incumbent on the claimant to prove that the signage was adequate in order for a contract to be formed, and given that they didn't visit the site to take more pictures and didn't bring their witness for questioning, the burden was on them
• Their lawyer sounded like a broken record going round and round stating the same thing - that they would have had to go through a process to ensure the signage was adequate, and that the poor birds eye view picture of the site demonstrated that there was "adequate dispersion" (calm down mate) of singage throughout the site.

The trouble for him was that I had the photos to prove that:

• signage was very high up on walls - between the first and second floors
• font was small generally, let alone the contract forming part which was tiny
• any reasonable motorist would have entered the site not knowing immediately that it was private land - looked like public highway
• any reasonable motorist with reasonable eyesight would have had to go through a bush and stand on the foliage with some sort of magnifying glass in order to clearly see the particulars of the contract

Other points to note

• The picture of their signage was given considerable, line by line, word by word scrutiny
• The picture of their contract with landowner was given line by line scrutiny also
• It helped massively that I hadn't revealed who the driver was, as their lawyer made reference on several occasions toward the end (getting desperate perhaps) that the driver hadn't been made available for questioning (neither was your witness, mate)
• It slightly worked against me the level of preparation that had gone into my defence, as both the judge and their lawyer deemed the defence to have prepared to a standard higher than a normal litigant-in-person and as such I feel held me to a higher standard in terms of what information I understood.
• A few of my photos in fact helped the claimant as they showed signage that otherwise would have been unclear to everyone - probably should have triple checked that, but it still helped me to some extent, so no biggie really
• The judge didn't care so much for my video from inside the vehicle
• The phrase "from ground level" was very relevant when considering the photos
• The lack of a clear entrance sign alerting the motorist to (a) private land (b) parking conditions was a very strong push over the line for the win
• We didn't talk about Vine really.
• I totally forgot about the costs schedule that had been submitted in advance
• Their lawyer was in a bit of a grump immediately after :rotfl:

abeltasman

That's great news, well done!

Did the judge say much about it being a forbidding contract / there being no offer of contract in terms of the wording on the sign?