BW Legal Court Claim

Sayn

Hello again


Can someone point me to any examples of witness statements if defending as a keeper as I can't seem to find any and not sure what I am supposed to write in a witness statement if I wasn't driving. How am i supposed to defend this?? Can someone please help with some direction now that it's at the witness statement stage.


Can witness statements include statements about what could have happened i.e. I believe the driver did not see the signs and may have drove into a car park space where there was no signs or do I just need to stick to facts and write about when I was first made aware about the fine by receiving letters from BW and how I asked them for evidence and they did not provide anything.


I think i am fighting a losing battle here.

Le_Kirk

If you have already written a defence based on fact, technical and legal points, your witness statement (WS) should be your account (written in the first person) of what happened on the day and relate to your defence and any evidence you are going to put forward. If you appealed as keeper rather than driver, the WS will be written as if the driver told you what happened. Use the search function in Advanced Mode to search using "Witness Statement" as your search term and change the radio button from Threads to Posts. You could add a further search term, which is the name of the PPC to limit the number of posts it finds.

nosferatu1001

The newbies thread also has (or had) exampels of witness stateemnts

There are dozens on here

You really should have done your research on this - you knew this was coming, because the newbies thread takes you through this step by step

You have to send the court your WS and any other ecvidnce you have - and you need some! - and you send a copy to the claimant / claimants solicitors, if theyre using one. Again, the court document explicitly tells you to serve on all parties, and the newbies thread also tells you this

To be blunt, this is YOUR claim to deal with, YOU know, from the newbies thread, the complete process and what you need to do

What is your deadline? 14 days before the hearing date?

Coupon-mad

I'm not sure if anyone is still watching this thread as don't seem to get much replies

It won't if you don't post! We don't 'watch' threads; we read the ones with replies.

Sayn

Thanks for that Le-kirk I will have a look again. I have been looking at other witness statements but couldn't find anything based on defending as a keeper so will have a look again based on the search points you suggested.



@ nosferatu10 and coupon-mad-

Of course I knew this was coming and I have been doing research whenever I can amongst trying to get on with normal life but there is 100's of threads on here and reading through each one takes so much time that it is impossible to get through all of them and you have to understand that it does take some of us who have never dealt with court proceedings or parking fines like this a little more time to digest and understand the information and what people are talking about in these threads so it's not a matter of not doing any research. I have got to this stage mostly by researching and doing things which I learnt how to do which is why I haven't posted as much as other threads but when I do get stuck I have asked the experts on this group who say they are here to help but I haven't always received replies to questions which is why I asked if it is still being read.


My deadline would be 5th March to send all this stuff off.


So I think I will be writing this witness statement as a keeper since the driver has not been identified by the claimant. I wouldn't be asked to reveal the driver by the judge at any point would I as I wouldn't want to get anyone else involved in this.

I have been to the carpark and noticed there are a few parking bays where the car could have been parked which don't have any signage around that area and if the driver had missed the signs at the entrance point then they could have been oblivious to any parking charge when they got out of the car and went straight into the shop that was next to that parking bay. There is only one parking sign to the left of that which was covered in alot of branches from the massive tree that is next to it so it is unreadable and could be missed if the branches were covered in leaves during the drivers visit last march.

Would putting this info in the witness statement be appropriate and say this is things I discovered when I went back to visit the car park to gather evidence or do I not include this stuff in the WS but put it as evidence seperately and say the driver did not see the signs due to lack of signs around those parking bays and just going into the one shop next to that parking bay and by not driving around the car park other more obvious signs were not seen so essentially this is the fault of the car park for not putting signs in the area of the car park where the driver parked.


Sorry if this is a bit confusing to understand, it would be alot more clearer if i included pictures of the car park to show what i'm trying to explain but do let me know your thoughts please on what i've said?


Thanks again everyone

Sayn

Hello guys


Can some one please answer this question for me so that I can prepare a WS as it will help me alot.


If I said in my defence statement that the claimant has failed to identify the driver and has not provided any proof of who was driving can I now defend as the driver in my witness statement and write it in the first person as though I was the driver??

KeithP

Yes you can but why would you want to throw away at a stroke the protection that the keeper has?


For the avoidance of doubt, I think that's a crazy idea.

Sayn

@ KeithP


The reason is because I am having difficulty trying to put together a WS as a keeper. I can't find any examples of how to put it together even though searching in the forum so thought it may be easier to write it as a driver and give an account of what happened on the day.


If I was to write it as a keeper am I able to say for e.g


I received the PCN on the following date...
I recently found out who the driver of the vehicle was on the day of contravention...
The driver has told me they went to the car park and parked in a certain spot....
The driver did not see any signs etc...


I don't understand how I can write a witness statement as a keeper and am supposed to relay events on the day if I wasn't there and saying I do not know who the driver was. Can someone explain this to me.


am I right in thinking if I write a WS based on a keeper then do I just write about when I received the PCN and the events of my day for e.g. My car was borrowed by the driver and I wasn't aware where they had gone. I spent the day of the contravention in my house watching Netflix?


Seriously this is driving me insane. I am so close to just giving up on it as don't think I will be able to defend it effectively and will end up messing something up at some point.

Coupon-mad

I don't understand how I can write a witness statement as a keeper and am supposed to relay events on the day if I wasn't there and saying I do not know who the driver was. Can someone explain this to me.

With the post above mentioning the driver being known not meaning the driver will lose the case I was just trying to determine what can be said in the case if the defendant goes in claiming he doesn't know who was driving but if the judge asked the defendant directly if they were the driver would the defendant simply say they could have been but can't be sure or say yes if the defendant definitely knew they were the driver on the day?

Seriously this is driving me insane. I am so close to just giving up on it as don't think I will be able to defend it effectively and will end up messing something up at some point.

You are clearly very worried about that. So maybe you should proceed as admitted driver as it will make you more comfortable and you will appear to be less shifty in front of the Judge! You want to be an 'honest witness' so sometimes that means defending as driver after all, as you have 'realised' it was probably you, despite the lack of evidence.

So, first thing to check - is the NTK one that says near the bottom of the paragraphs on the front page, that, at the end of the 28 day period 'beginning with the day after this PCN was served' YOU/the keeper can be held liable if they do not receive payment or know the driver details...?

SPECIFICALLY?

I am not asking about any other mention of 28 days.

Sayn

Coupon-mad wrote: »

You are clearly very worried about that. So maybe you should proceed as admitted driver as it will make you more comfortable and you will appear to be less shifty in front of the Judge! You want to be an 'honest witness' so sometimes that means defending as driver after all, as you have 'realised' it was probably you, despite the lack of evidence.

So, first thing to check - is the NTK one that says near the bottom of the paragraphs on the front page, that, at the end of the 28 day period 'beginning with the day after this PCN was served' YOU/the keeper can be held liable if they do not receive payment or know the driver details...?

SPECIFICALLY?

I am not asking about any other mention of 28 days.

Thank you Coupon-mad. What you have said does make sense to me and I think defending as the driver will enable me to understand things better and allow me to put a stronger WS together and less chance of saying something that I shouldn't as I am really not cut out for this sort of stuff.


This was what I was trying to understand whether I was able to defend as a driver from this point onwards as I had put in my defence that the driver has not been identified.


I will need to check that NTK when I get home and get back to you on what it says exactly on there.


Thanks again.