CCJ issues: default judgment claim form not signed?

chiquita73 · 4 August 2017 at 6:53PM

Dear all, I am new to the boards, sorry in advance for any obvious naiveties.

I received an email to 2 addresses (including my work address) 2 days ago informing me I had had a judgment in default made against me on behalf of the solicitors who advised me on an abortive divorce case from 2009-12.

The solicitor advising me was very nice but totally useless. She dropped out of contact with me in 2012 and I've just found out through checking a very old email account that she retired in 2016. She had all my contact details, and I am also pretty sure she had my full forwarding address (although I can't prove this). She certainly had my mobile phone number which has been the same for years.

The only contact I've had since then was a rather odd and very aggressive phone call to my work last year sometime, in which a man who didn't give his name demanded £6000 within 15 days. He also demanded my current address which I didn't give to him as I couldn't be sure he was who he said he was. He lost his temper at that point. I said I would expect a final bill from him. This didn't arrive either at my work or by email. I have just checked the spam folder at work this week and found he sent nothing but a Word document listing 3 sums to pay. That was it. Since he titled it 'invoices' and it had a large attachment, it ended up in the spam. I heard nothing after that and forgot about it again as I used to be a solicitor long ago, and know they have to send a final bill to demand payment.

I've now got the claim form emailed to me by the court (for whatever reason, the solicitors who have obtained the judgement (another firm,they must have outsourced it) chose to email me just now although the judgment in default was obtained on June 16).

The claim form provided to me by the court was very odd in that it wasn't sealed or signed?? I am quite surprised by this to say the least. The claim was no doubt served online but doesn't the electronic copy at least have to be signed?

I wonder if anyone has experience of this- is the copy the court have sent to me likely to be the 'served' copy or do they save only drafts??
Obviously if the claim form is lacking formalities that's a serious problem with their claim. I'll be asking to have it set aside anyway on the basis that it was sent to the wrong address (I can't prove I gave my solicitor my new address which is very annoying, but she definitely knew I was moving as the advice she was giving me was all about that, and I am on the electoral roll so was hardly hiding. Plus, they could have bothered to email me the claim form as its extremely easy to find my work address and the email comes up at the top of Google.

I'll also be claiming that I would have had a realistic prospect of a defence as they have breached the solicitors code of conduct by suing me on invoices rather than a signed final bill. Their service was also awful, as above, so poor that the solicitor retired before she bothered to conclude my divorce (I ended up doing it myself as she was so crap). So I will say I'd like the opportunity to review the final bill and have it assessed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Obviously I may be unsuccessful in which case I will have to suck it up - a 9k bill, 3k of which is fees and interest :eek:

One thing I'd love to hear from you all in particular is whether these irregularities with the claim form lodged with the court are a problem. I'm really surprised to have received an unsigned, unsealed claim form - but is this kind of thing what happens with electronic money claims? Should I mention the irregularities in my set aside application?

Many thanks, chiquita