Witness statement help please - Court date set! Gladstones / UKCPM

bargepole

FlyingHorse wrote: »

A large amount of space is taken up by listing all the clauses that pertain to parking set out in the lease agreement. To me it seems prudent to do this to save a judge having to trawl through the lease agreement, but maybe I'm wrong about this?

The Judge will probably want to look at the lease document anyway, rather than the extracted clauses in your skeleton. You could simply refer to the clause numbers, rather than repeat the wording.

But in any event, my prediction is that this case will be done and dusted in far less time than it took to write the skeleton.

FlyingHorse

Johnersh wrote: »

Its entirely up to you. Present what you are most comfortable with.

An alternate approach could be to say " the core provisions in the lease pertaining to parking are found at clauses x, y , z of the lease, which is at tab XX of the bundle. The defence case is that these are the entitlements to use the land and that they cannot be superseded or varied by the signage displayed by the claimant" . The onus would then be on you to explain them orally at the hearing (as it always is).

FWIW my approach would be to try and go for short Skellys because a good defence and statement will already be lengthy enough.

That way, prior to the hearing the court has a short note which takes the DJ to the only 3 paras of the lease he needs look at or whatever else are "killer points" and has a list of arguments distilling the case to perhaps 3-4 pages.

My WS was fairly short though as I was encouraged to separate facts and arguments, so all the arguments are being presented here.

Doing this exercise is getting the arguments straight in my head anyway. I am just trying to shorten the SA a bit by taking out all the quotations and referencing them instead,and rewording some things/cutting out waffle. I'm already down to 14 pages and only half way through. Aiming for 10 pages.

System

Aiming for 10 pages

Does the WS not speak for itself? If the facts i.e. the WS is clear then what is the point of reiterating them and leading a judge by the nose through "Law for Dummies"

By all means have a SA but use it as a prompt/aide memoire for yourself.

FlyingHorse

IamEmanresu wrote: »

Does the WS not speak for itself? If the facts i.e. the WS is clear then what is the point of reiterating them and leading a judge by the nose through "Law for Dummies"

By all means have a SA but use it as a prompt/aide memoire for yourself.

The WS doesn't really speak for itself as I didn't have much time to analyse the lease agreement properly in the WS and the fact that the landowner did not sign the agreement with UKCPM only came to light after I had received the Claimant's WS.

I've got this down to 13 pages now, but the judge need only look at the first 7 really (issues A and B pertaining to primacy of contract) and the introductory parts make this clear. The Issues about whether or not the action constituted parking and whether the signs offered a contract (C and D) are only necessary if the judge finds that the claimant has standing, which they won't unless the Claimant pulls some evidence out that I've not seen (hence why I've included issues C and D at all - and the fact they are in my defence).

I really don't see how I could reduce it any more now to be honest short of jettisoning Issues C and D completely.

I will redact and upload this new version. If you see anything I can remove, please let me know!

FlyingHorse

latest draft:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gjukxe569ml11y5/Skeleton%20Argument%20Draft%203%20%28redacted%29.pdf?dl=0

FlyingHorse

Hi all, I have a couple of questions regarding an application for costs.

Do I need to submit an application for costs to the court on the day or can I do this afterwards?

I was thinking of preparing something like this that was prepared by LoadsofChildren:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4cn1tbjiim1ycsl/COSTS%20APPLICATION%20updated.docx?dl=0

But most of this points to examples of where the Defendant has asked the Claimant questions / requested documents which the Claimant has refused or ignored. In this case, we had little contact with the Claimant as we never even received the original Notice to Keeper, the only correspondence we had was from the debt recovery people and Gladstones. All this was ignored (assumed to be a scam) until court action was started, as there was no NtK.

Does us ignoring the debt recovery and Gladstones letters mean we are breaching the Practice Direction? Or can we reasonably expect to be able to claim costs in this case as the NtK was never received and we never received any documentation or evidence of any alleged wrongdoing from the Claimant until we received the WS 2 weeks ago? The particulars of claim were also terrible and there have been other breaches of the PD on their part.

Thoughts?

Coupon-mad

Do I need to submit an application for costs to the court on the day or can I do this afterwards?

You must file it a few days before, and email a copy to the other side, and take it with you on the day plus proof of your daily rate/loss of leave, travel & parking.

beamerguy

FlyingHorse wrote: »

Does us ignoring the debt recovery and Gladstones letters mean we are breaching the Practice Direction? Or can we reasonably expect to be able to claim costs in this case as the NtK was never received and we never received any documentation or evidence of any alleged wrongdoing from the Claimant until we received the WS 2 weeks ago? The particulars of claim were also terrible and there have been other breaches of the PD on their part.

Thoughts?

Practice Direction is for Gladstones to obey
It's not your problem that Gladstones is so incompetent.
The courts are well aware of this and them

Continue with your costs schedule

FlyingHorse

Ah OK. The hearing is tomorrow at 2pm and I've just managed to send it via email to the court and claimant so hopefully 24 hours is enough!

Coupon-mad

Should be, and print out a copy of the 'sent items' to both, to prove it went. Put that email in your bundle.