N1SDT Claim Form Recieved - No communication up to this point

KeithP

Denji11 wrote: »

A quick concern I do have is that I am away for the next three weeks from Thursday with very limited access to an internet connection. If I manage to send off the defence prior to leaving will there be anything after IE the Directions Questionnaire that will need to be acted upon promptly ? (ie. within the three weeks)

As your Defence isn't due until 17 Sept, could you not prepare the email with attachment before you go away, then with your 'limited email access' sent the email a lot closer to that date?
You would then only have a few days 'gap' which is not a problem.

That does assume you have done the Acknowledgement of Service.
If not, get that done before you go away.

Denji11

Acknowledgement of Service has been done, yes. I was more worried that if I need to make further changes, then print, sign and scan in.... I definitely wont be able to do that while away.

I can certainly prepare everything providing the defence is now looking suitable.

Thanks

KeithP

Whatever you do, you'll need to finalise the text of your Defence and prepare it for sending before you go away.

I'm only suggesting you delay the sending - if that's possible.

Le_Kirk

There are some email providers (Gmail for example) who have a facility to allow delayed sending of email. Depending upon who your provider is, you may be able to use this facility. You have to do it through the web based email rather than through your email client, Gmail.com rather than Outlook.

Denji11

Im happy to finalise my defence today, sign and scan ready to send unless anyone can see anything glaringly wrong with it or if there is any thing that potentially needs including.


Thanks All

nosferatu1001

You just sign your name on WHITE paper, take a close up photo, and insert into your defence doc. EASY. You then dont have to print ANYTHING out, and can do all of this while youre away.

Coupon-mad

Remove #9 entirely.

And remove this, it is unnecessary to quote this at defence stage:

which says;
3.1 'If you operate parking management activities on land which is not owned by you, you must supply us with written authority from the land owner sufficient to establish you as the 'Creditor' within the meaning of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (where applicable) and in any event to establish you as a person who is able to recover parking charges. There is no prescribed form for such agreement and it need not necessarily be as part of a contract but it must include the express ability for an operator to recover parking charges on the landowner's behalf or provide sufficient right to occupy the land in question so that charges can be recovered by the operator directly. This applies whether or not you intend to use the keeper liability provisions.'

Denji11

Hi all,

On to take 6 whilst I have a brief moment of internet access. Thanking you all again for taking the time to assist me throughout this. I also took nosferatu's advice on the blank paper signature so thanks for that too!

Please see below:

IN THE COUNTY COURT

CLAIM No: xxxxxxxxx
BETWEEN:

UK CAR PARK MANAGEMENT LTD (Claimant)

-and-

xxxxxxxxxxxx (Defendant)
________________________________________
DEFENCE
________________________________________
Background
1. The defendant was issued a PCN notice by the claimant on xxxx at xxxxx.

2. The signage was inadequate to form a contract with the rider
2.1 The signage on this site is inadequate to form a contract. It is barely legible, making it difficult to read, particularly through a motorcycle helmet.
2.2 The sign is in such a position that’s easily blocked by other vehicles. When the defendant’s vehicle was parked there were other vehicles surrounding it which blocked the entire visibility of the sign.
2.2a This is evidently visible by the way the defendant’s vehicle had been left yet it still did not block any public walkways or cause any disruption.

2.3 The sign does not contain an obligation as to how to ‘validly display’ the ticket in the windscreen, this is again in particular for a motorcycle, therefore there was no breach of any ‘relevant obligation’ or ‘relevant contract’ as required under Schedule 4 of POFA.
2.4 In the absence of ‘adequate notice’ of the terms and the charge (which must be in
large prominent letters such as the brief, clear and multiple signs in the Beavis case)
this fails to meet the requirements of Schedule 4 of the POFA.
2.5 The signage displayed information which was incorrect of the private parking area being managed by the claimant whereby there were no parking bays at all visible.
2.6 The driver did not enter into any 'agreement on the charge', no consideration flowed between the parties and no contract was established.
2.7 The Defendant denies that the driver would have agreed to pay the original demand of £100 to agree to the alleged contract had the terms and conditions of the contract been properly displayed and accessible.
2.8 The private parking area in which the claimant manages looked like a public parking area as no clear parking signs were visible and with other vehicles parked without clear tickets displayed.

3. The claimant failed to include a copy of their written contract as per Practice Direction 16 7.3(1) and Practice Direction 7C 1.4(3A). No indication is given as to the Claimants contractual authority to operate there as required by the Claimants Trade Association's Code of Practice B1.1

4. The particulars of the claim do not meet the requirements of Practice Direction 16 7.5 as there is nothing which specifies how the terms were breached. Inadequate signage details no parking outside of a designated area / parking bay - yet none are defined. Indeed the particulars of claim are not clear and concise as is required by CPR 16.4

5. The Claimants are known to be serial issuers of generic claims similar to this one. HM Courts Service have identified over 1000 similar sparse claims. I believe the term for such behaviour is ‘roboclaims’ and as such is against the public interest. Practice Direction 3A which references Civil Procedure Rule 3.4 illustrates this point:
5.1 The following are examples of cases where the court may conclude that particulars of claim (whether contained in a claim form or filed separately) fall within rule 3.4:
5.2 Those which set out no facts indicating what the claim is about, for example ‘Money owed £1000’,
5.3 Those which are incoherent and make no sense,
5.4 Those which contain a coherent set of facts but those facts, even if true, do not
disclose any legally recognisable claim against the defendant


6. The Claimant has not complied with the pre-court protocol:
6.1 The defendant refers the court to Para 4 on non-compliance and sanction, and the defendant also points out that there can be no reasonable excuse for the Claimant's failure to follow the Pre-action Conduct process, especially bearing in mind that the Claim was issued by their own Solicitors so they clearly had legal advice before issuing proceedings.
6.2 There was no compliant Letter before County Court Claim, under the Practice Direction.
6.3 This is a speculative serial litigant, issuing a large number of draft particulars. The badly mail-merged documents contain very little information.
6.4 The Schedule of Information is sparse of detailed information.

7. The Claimant's increasingly demanding letters failed to evidence any contravention or
clear/prominent signage.

8. The claimant has not provided enough details in the particulars of claim to file a full
defence. In particular, the full details of the contract which it is alleged was broken
have not been provided.
8.1 The Claimant has disclosed no specific cause of action to give rise to any debt.
8.2 The Claimant has stated that a parking charge was incurred.
8.3 The Particulars of Claim contains no details and fails to establish a cause of action
which would enable the Defendant to prepare a specific defence.
It just states “parking charges” which does not give any indication of on what basis
the claim is brought. There is no information regarding why the charge arose, what the original charge was, what the alleged contract was nor anything which could be considered a fair exchange of information.

9. The Claimant has at no time provided an explanation how the sum has been
calculated, the conduct that gave rise to it or how the amount has climbed from £100
to £160. This appears to be an added cost with apparently no qualification and an
attempt at double recovery, which the POFA Schedule 4 specifically disallows.
9.1 The Protection of Freedom Act Para 4(5) states that the maximum sum that may be recovered from the keeper is the charge stated on the Notice to Keeper.

10. The Claimant has sent threatening and misleading demands which stated that
further debt recovery action would be taken to recover what is owed by passing the
debt to a ‘local’ recovery agent (which suggested to the Defendant they would be
calling round like bailiffs)
10.1 No figure for additional charges was 'agreed' nor could it have formed part of the
alleged 'contract' because no such indemnity costs were quantified on the sign.
10.2 Terms cannot be bolted on later with figures plucked out of thin air, as if they were incorporated into the small print when they were not.
10.3 The Defendant also disputes that the Claimant has incurred £50 solicitor costs.
10.4 The Defendant has the reasonable belief that the Claimant has not incurred £50 costs to pursue an alleged £100 debt.
10.5 Not withstanding the Defendant's belief, the costs are in any case not recoverable.
10.6 The Claimant described the charge of £50.00 "legal representative costs" not "contractual costs". CPR 27.14 does not permit these to be recovered in the Small Claims Court.

11. The Defendant would like to point out that this car park can be fully distinguished from the details, facts and location in the Beavis case. This site does not offer a free parking licence, nor is there any comparable 'legitimate interest' nor complex contractual arrangement to disengage the penalty rule, as ParkingEye did in the unique case heard by the Supreme Court in 2015.

12. The defendant denies the claim in its entirety voiding any liability to the claimant for all amounts claimed due to the aforementioned reasons.
It is submitted that the conduct of the Claimant is wholly unreasonable and vexatious.
As such, the defendant is keeping a note of any wasted time/costs in dealing with this matter.

13. The defendant requests the court strike out this claim for the reasons stated above.

The defendant, XXXXX, in this matter was the rider of the vehicle in question at the time of the alleged incident.

The defendant believes the facts contained in this Defence are true.

Coupon-mad

Remove numbers 4, 5, 6, 9 and 10 as they all either repeat something that's already there, or they make no sense and are based on a CEL claim (mail merged copies, local recovery agent, etc are not a feature of a Gladstones/UKCPM claim).

and this is 2 separate points about 2 different meanings of the word 'contract':

3. The claimant failed to include a copy of their written contract as per Practice Direction 16 7.3(1) and Practice Direction 7C 1.4(3A). No indication is given as to the Claimants contractual authority to operate there as required by the Claimants Trade Association's Code of Practice B1.1

needs splitting, and point #3 is ONLY true if UKCPM provided no pics of signs:

3. The claimant failed to include a copy of their written contractual terms (on signage in this case) as per Practice Direction 16 7.3(1) and Practice Direction 7C 1.4(3A).

3.1. It cannot be assumed that the Defendant has seen the terms either on the material day, or since. Nothing made it clear that drivers were entering onto 'private land' under IPC AOS firm enforcement.

3.2. The Claimant's sign was not seen on the material date because it is small and placed in a non-prominent place, being particularly difficult to notice given that the vehicle was a motorcycle and the Defendant was wearing a helmet on arrival. A hidden sign with 'parking charge' terms in minuscule font, placed out of the natural line of sight (failing to meet the high bar set in Lord Denning's Red Hand Rule) simply could not be seen, through no fault or omission of the Defendant.

4. No indication is given as to the Claimant's contractual authority to operate there, as required by the IPC (the Trade Body - which until recently, shared the same Directors as Gladstone solicitors who bring this case to court) Code of Practice B1.1.

4.1. It is averred that, even if a landowner contract exists, this Claimant operates on behalf of the landholder on an agency basis, and the Claimant has no standing to sue for conduct by the Defendant that could only (potentially) be recovered by the landowner, for any damages/costs arising from an alleged act of trespass.

5. No consideration flowed between the Defendant and Claimant and the elements of a contractual agreement do not exist. The Claimant had nothing of value to offer. The Defendant avers that a parking licence was not on offer at all, at that time on a Saturday, to alleged 'unauthorised' drivers and the Claimant is operating a predatory trap, contrary to the IPC Code of Practice.

5.1. The location outside an accountancy shop which was closed, as it was outside of trading hours and if - as it seems on the sparse information divulged by the Claimant - parking was prohibited, then a contract to allow such conduct at a price is absurd. The three figure claim is a disingenuous attempt by a parking firm not in possession, to circumvent the lawful remedy open to a landowner under the tort of trespass and dress the conduct up as if the Defendant breached a contract.

6. The above point was recently tested in the following court hearings:
(i) County Court at High Wycombe, in the case of Parking Control Management (UK) Ltd v Bull & 2 Others (B4GF26K6, 21 April 2016), where District Judge Glen dismissed all three claims, stating in his judgment that:

''If the notice had said no more than if you park on this roadway you agree to pay a charge then it would have been implicit that PCM was saying we will allow you to park on this roadway if you pay £100 and I would agree with Mr Samuels' first analysis that essentially the £100 was a part of the core consideration for the licence and was not a penalty for breach. The difficulty is that this notice does not say that at all. This notice is an absolute prohibition against parking at any time, for any period, on the roadway. It is impossible to construct out of this in any way, either actually or contingently or conditionally, any permission for anyone to park on the roadway. All this is essentially saying is you must not trespass on the roadway. If you do we are giving ourselves, and we are dressing it up in the form of a contract, the right to charge you a sum of money which really would be damages for trespass, assuming of course that the claimant had any interest in the land in order to proceed in trespass.''

6.1. Whilst this is a County Court decision and therefore not binding, it is on all fours with the present case and may be considered as persuasive. A full transcript of the Approved Judgment for the above case will be provided, in the event that this case proceeds to a hearing.

I would defend this by admitting you were the motorbike rider, no point hiding behind 'no keeper liability' if UKCPM sent their usual NTK in time, they can hold you liable as keeper anyway, so you may as well take the honest stance in front of the Judge at the hearing, that you were there.

Have this as replacement points #9 and #10:

9. The Claimant has artificially inflated the value of the Claim to an unconscionably high three-figure sum. The Defendant submits the £60 of added 'indemnity' costs has not actually been incurred by the Claimant and that this is an abuse of process, being an attempt to achieve double recovery, in a parking charge case where the sum of £100 is already artificially high, in order to more then comfortably cover the minor costs of operating a low-cost/template letter parking scheme. There have been no damages or further expenditure.

10. The Defendant has reason to believe that this is a claim that will proceed without any facts or evidence supplied until the last possible minute, to their significant detriment as an unrepresented Defendant.

Denji11

Ok, hopefully ready to go now as the defence needs to be submitted today. Thanks again for all the assistance. See below:


IN THE COUNTY COURT

CLAIM No: xxxxxxxxx

BETWEEN:

UK CAR PARK MANAGEMENT LTD (Claimant)

-and-

xxxxxxxxxxxx (Defendant)
________________________________________
DEFENCE
________________________________________
Background
1. The defendant was issued a PCN notice by the claimant on xxxx at xxxxx.

2. The signage was inadequate to form a contract with the rider:
a. The signage on this site is inadequate to form a contract. It is barely legible, making it difficult to read, particularly through a motorcycle helmet.
b. The sign is in such a position that’s easily blocked by other vehicles. When the defendant’s vehicle was parked there were other vehicles surrounding it which blocked the entire visibility of the sign.
i. This is evidently visible by the way the defendant’s vehicle had been left yet it still did not block any public walkways or cause any disruption.
c. The sign does not contain an obligation as to how to ‘validly display’ the ticket in the windscreen, this is again in particular for a motorcycle, therefore there was no breach of any ‘relevant obligation’ or ‘relevant contract’ as required under Schedule 4 of POFA.
d. In the absence of ‘adequate notice’ of the terms and the charge (which must be in large prominent letters such as the brief, clear and multiple signs in the Beavis case) this fails to meet the requirements of Schedule 4 of the POFA.
e. The signage displayed information which was incorrect of the private parking area being managed by the claimant whereby there were no parking bays at all visible.
f. The driver did not enter into any 'agreement on the charge', no consideration flowed between the parties and no contract was established.
g. The Defendant denies that the driver would have agreed to pay the original demand of £100 to agree to the alleged contract had the terms and conditions of the contract been properly displayed and accessible.
h. The private parking area in which the claimant manages looked like a public parking area as no clear parking signs were visible and with other vehicles parked without clear tickets displayed.

3. The claimant failed to include a copy of their written contractual terms (on signage in this case) as per Practice Direction 16 7.3(1) and Practice Direction 7C 1.4(3A).
a. It cannot be assumed that the Defendant has seen the terms either on the material day, or since. Nothing made it clear that drivers were entering onto 'private land' under IPC AOS firm enforcement.
b. The Claimant's sign was not seen on the material date because it is small and placed in a non-prominent place, being particularly difficult to notice given that the vehicle was a motorcycle and the Defendant was wearing a helmet on arrival. A hidden sign with 'parking charge' terms in minuscule font, placed out of the natural line of sight (failing to meet the high bar set in Lord Denning's Red Hand Rule) simply could not be seen, through no fault or omission of the Defendant.

4. No indication is given as to the Claimant's contractual authority to operate there, as required by the IPC (the Trade Body - which until recently, shared the same Directors as Gladstone solicitors who bring this case to court) Code of Practice B1.1.
a. It is averred that, even if a landowner contract exists, this Claimant operates on behalf of the landholder on an agency basis, and the Claimant has no standing to sue for conduct by the Defendant that could only (potentially) be recovered by the landowner, for any damages/costs arising from an alleged act of trespass.

5. No consideration flowed between the Defendant and Claimant and the elements of a contractual agreement do not exist. The Claimant had nothing of value to offer. The Defendant avers that a parking licence was not on offer at all, at that time on a Saturday, to alleged 'unauthorised' drivers and the Claimant is operating a predatory trap, contrary to the IPC Code of Practice.
a. The location outside an accountancy shop which was closed, as it was outside of trading hours and if - as it seems on the sparse information divulged by the Claimant - parking was prohibited, then a contract to allow such conduct at a price is absurd. The three-figure claim is a disingenuous attempt by a parking firm not in possession, to circumvent the lawful remedy open to a landowner under the tort of trespass and dress the conduct up as if the Defendant breached a contract.

6. The above point was recently tested in the following court hearings:
(i) County Court at High Wycombe, in the case of Parking Control Management (UK) Ltd v Bull & 2 Others (B4GF26K6, 21 April 2016), where District Judge Glen dismissed all three claims, stating in his judgment that:

''If the notice had said no more than if you park on this roadway you agree to pay a charge then it would have been implicit that PCM was saying we will allow you to park on this roadway if you pay £100 and I would agree with Mr Samuels' first analysis that essentially the £100 was a part of the core consideration for the licence and was not a penalty for breach. The difficulty is that this notice does not say that at all. This notice is an absolute prohibition against parking at any time, for any period, on the roadway. It is impossible to construct out of this in any way, either actually or contingently or conditionally, any permission for anyone to park on the roadway. All this is essentially saying is you must not trespass on the roadway. If you do we are giving ourselves, and we are dressing it up in the form of a contract, the right to charge you a sum of money which really would be damages for trespass, assuming of course that the claimant had any interest in the land in order to proceed in trespass.''
a. Whilst this is a County Court decision and therefore not binding, it is on all fours with the present case and may be considered as persuasive. A full transcript of the Approved Judgment for the above case will be provided, in the event that this case proceeds to a hearing.

7. The Claimant's increasingly demanding letters failed to evidence any contravention or clear/prominent signage.

8. The claimant has not provided enough details in the particulars of claim to file a full
defence. In particular, the full details of the contract which it is alleged was broken
have not been provided.
a. The Claimant has disclosed no specific cause of action to give rise to any debt.
b. The Claimant has stated that a parking charge was incurred.
c. The Particulars of Claim contains no details and fails to establish a cause of action which would enable the Defendant to prepare a specific defence.
It just states “parking charges” which does not give any indication of on what basis the claim is brought. There is no information regarding why the charge arose, what the original charge was, what the alleged contract was nor anything which could be considered a fair exchange of information.

9. The Claimant has artificially inflated the value of the Claim to an unconscionably high three-figure sum. The Defendant submits the £60 of added 'indemnity' costs has not actually been incurred by the Claimant and that this is an abuse of process, being an attempt to achieve double recovery, in a parking charge case where the sum of £100 is already artificially high, in order to more than comfortably cover the minor costs of operating a low-cost/template letter parking scheme. There have been no damages or further expenditure.

10. The Defendant has reason to believe that this is a claim that will proceed without any facts or evidence supplied until the last possible minute, to their significant detriment as an unrepresented Defendant.


11. The defendant requests the court strike out this claim for the reasons stated above.

The defendant, XXXXX, in this matter was the rider of the vehicle in question at the time of the alleged incident.

The defendant believes the facts contained in this Defence are true.