Court Claim Form help please

nosferatu1001

Good going!
Hope you got costs as well!

claxtome

Great news - 2 wins today :T:beer::j

Looking forward to hearing the details and how much you managed to get in costs.

SaveMeSomeMoney

I’d first like to thank you all for your invaluable help in preparing for this case- it was our first time in court for a PCN and we didn’t know where to start or what to do. But with all the advice and information from this forum we were able to draft a solid defence with lots of evidence and arm ourselves with enough legal info as was needed to represent oursleves in a court. So thank you so much everyone.

The plan was to get to court at least half hour early, as advised here, and it would normally take us 15 minutes to get to it but instead, due to heavy traffic caused by an incident on the roads, it took us 45 minutes to get there- we basically got to court 5 minutes before our hearing! So we were already stressed out when we got there - not the best start!
We introduced ourselves to the court usher-my wife informed her that she’d be my Lay Rep and the Usher wrote it down and said she’ll inform the judge. She then pointed to a man already seated in the waiting room and said he’s the Claimant’s representative. He did not look approachable at all- he was on his phone the whole time we were in the waiting room and didn’t once look up and see us. So we left him to it as we thought we’d rather calm our nerves down first and relax a bit before we got called in.
We were then called in and it was just me, my wife, the claimant’s legal rep and the judge in the courtroom. The judge asked us to introduce ourselves and then went on to explain what would happen- that he’ll hear from the claimant’s legal rep first and then we would get a chance to put our defence points forward. Since the PPC’s witness was not present in court herself to talk about her statement (no surprise there!), the judge said it was a shame as he wouldn’t be able to cross- examine her and hear from her directly. (He also said to the other legal rep- why don’t your witnesses ever turn up?)
So the judge asked him what the basis of their claim was and the legal rep just read out from the witness statement (WS) of the parking officer (PO) that -a) it was a breach of contract and b) there was sufficient, visible and clear signage at the site. Seems to us that the judge had already made his mind up about the contract as he said that he agreed with the claimant that as per the wording on their sign a contract did exist! This frankly amazed us as we were very confident that this would be the point that we’d raise first and get the case dismissed straightaway! But the judge was having none of it when we pointed out to him that the wording on the signs are forbidding and not offering a contract. He basically didn’t want to budge on it at all and told us to raise another point instead!
Then the judge told the other legal rep that we (defendants) were claiming that the photo of the signs that the PO had attached to her WS was not that of the actual sign on the day of the pcn and the signage on that road has changed a few times since the pcn was issued. The judge said he couldn’t disagree with us and had only our word for it as the PO had not explained anything about the sign and it’s wording etc on her WS and she was also not present to explain it in detail, so he has to consider our point as they could provide no evidence to prove otherwise.
Then the judge asked us to put our points forward- my wife said the grace period was insufficient as it was only 2 mins as stated on the PCN. Apparently, neither the judge nor the other legal rep knew that the PCN was issued for a 2 minute period, even though we had attached copies of it to my WS. Obviously Gladstones hadn’t provided the rep with copy of our WS bundle! The judge asked to see the PCN and asked us to show it to the other legal rep as well. He then said how many minutes do you think is sufficient amount of grace period- he asked the other legal rep who said that it was a grey area and the judge agreed. He then asked us and my wife said it should be 5 minutes at least (on retrospect she felt she should’ve said 10mins but her nerves had got the better of her and she just blurted out 5!) My wife then carried on to say that the 2 minutes weren’t enough for a normal person, let alone a disabled perosn like me, to get out of the car, read the signs, decide whether to accept the terms, get back in the car and drive off! The judge said he accepted her explanation and asked us to move to our next point.
My wife then mentioned that the PC hadn’t complied with the equality act and ipc code of conduct for disabled people- but again the judge quickly dismissed that point and said the PO couldn’t have know that the driver was disabled especially as there was no disabled badge displayed. Even when my wife brought to his atention that it was the duty of the PPC to anticipate that disabled people will use their services and hence they should’ve considered this in advance, the judge immediately dismissed that point and asked us to move onto our next one!
Our third point was how the PO had used predatory tactics, thereby not complying with the ipc code, by slapping the pcn on within a matter of minutes of us leaving our car. The judge said he agreed with that as the time on the PCN proved someone had watched us leave and had almost immediately issued the pcn.
The fourth point we raised was, as the judge had mentioned before, that their signage had changed and the photo of the one attached to their WS was not of the actual signs on the site on the date of the PCN - we submitted photos from google maps from around the date when the pcn was issued to the present day which showed that the signs had changed twice during that period. The judge said that he couldn’t disagree with us on that as the PPC’s witness had failed to give more details regarding the sign and provide any proof supporting their claim that the signs were clearly worded and compliant with IPC requirements.
The judge then asked us if we had anything else to add and we said that those were the main points we wanted to raise. He then asked the other legal rep if had anything to add and he said no.
So then the judge said he would pass his verdict and went through it point by point- he said he agreed with us about the grace period- he personally thought it should be at least 10 mins. He said he agreed 2 minutes just wasn’t enough time. He then said he was going to dismiss the point about the PPC’s non compliance with the ipc code regarding disability as the PO wasn’t to know if the driver was disabled or not without a disabled badge on display. The judge went on to the third point about predatory tactics and said he agreeed that the PC did not comply with the ipc code on that. Finally he said that he would accept our claim that the signage was different to the one whose photo the PO had attached to her WS, and that it has changed since then, as he had nothing from the claimant to prove otherwise. He said on the basis of the points that the defendant has raised and that he agrees with, he dismisses the claim.
He went on to ask if there were any costs we wanted and we gave him the paper with claim for costs we had prepared. He said he wouldn’t be able to award us anything other than the mileage as he didn’t see how the Claimant had ‘behaved unreasonably’. He wouldn’t even let us explain how we could prove that they had! So all we got was around £8 for the mileage. But that didn’t even matter to us- basically the judge was picking on every point since the hearing started, me and my wife belived he was being a bit too nice to the other legal rep- he said to the other solicitor that he felt that he hadn’t done justice if their witness didn’t turn up in court to explain the points inher WS , he also made many friendly comments to the other solicitor during the hearing. Throughout the hearing we felt that it could’ve gone either way, as the judge was giving the claimant’s legal rep every opportunity to dispute each of our points, so we were just relieved that he had eventually taken our defence on board and dismissed the case. We didn’t even mind not getting any costs even though it would’ve been nice to get them to pay us back for all the stress they caused us over nearly 2 years and the time we wasted on this case.
But it’s all over and we can just get on with our lives now.

SaveMeSomeMoney

The judge was impressed with the way the casework had been prepared and praised my wife for her calmness and confidence and for representing me so well. He asked her if she had received legal training! ��

Coupon-mad

Well done!

I wonder what the Judge would have said abut his 'friend' if you'd challenged the Rights of Audience and exposed the person as not allowed to represent these cases at all (quite possibly). If they were from Elms Legal then I believe they can have had no RoA.

Hooray! To you and your wife, justice did prevail even if the Judge was too cosy with the rep. :T

Did you see Laura Higgs also won in court today?! Posters here have a phenomenal win rate.

nosferatu1001

Another well done, if you are able to stay around and help others, your first hand experience of the entire process is invaluable!

Ralph-y

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thanks


Ralph:cool:

SaveMeSomeMoney

Coupon-mad wrote: »

Well done!

I wonder what the Judge would have said abut his 'friend' if you'd challenged the Rights of Audience and exposed the person as not allowed to represent these cases at all (quite possibly). If they were from Elms Legal then I believe they can have had no RoA.

Hooray! To you and your wife, justice did prevail even if the Judge was too cosy with the rep. :T

From the minute we got in the room it was evident that the judge knew the other legal rep as he was exchanging pleasantries with him!.
My wife said she wanted to bring the roa up but the late arrival at court had thrown her a bit and she was a bit flustered and forgot to bring that up.

SaveMeSomeMoney

nosferatu1001 wrote: »

Another well done, if you are able to stay around and help others, your first hand experience of the entire process is invaluable!

Thanks nosferatu1001.
We would definitely like to do all we can to help others who are in the same situation. without help from the people on this forum we would've not been able to challenge the PCN on our own.