Disability and PNC/BWlegal

Redx

one of the MP,s in the recent report stage or third reading a couple of weeks ago also gave special mention to Premier Park of Exeter too (or he reiterated the same or a similar concern) , for the fact that they had generated more complaints about one car park than the other 27 car parks in that area, or something like that


https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/parkingcodeofpractice.html

PaddingtonB

update i now have the 30 day form with the debt stuff added is this still alright to ignore or is this the official letter before claim?

PaddingtonB

BTW starting to stress me know so want to know at what point i can request legal advise from my house insurance, is it when I receive a letter before claim or is this "letter of claim" with the 30 day reply form the definition of letter before claim is it implies ' it could result in court proceedings'.... please help explain this bit as its getting scary now

The_Deep

BTW starting to stress me know so want to know at what point i can request legal advise from my house insurance

I very much doubt if it would be as good as that available here. Our collective knowledge of these scams is vast.

Have you read this?
https://www.xperthr.co.uk/faq/is-dyslexia-a-disability-under-the-equality-act-2010/153952/

PaddingtonB

I do not doubt it may not be as good as hear but due to my disability I want help from someone who can read this legal jargon you all seem at ease talking about and write a response for me.

I have 100K of cover, I have a good working knowledge of the equality act as I am an equality guardian for a role in the NHS.

What is more problematic is the joining of the two laws. Everyone on here seems to have great knowledge of contract law, unfortunately this is reasonable adjustment. Generally RA is usually covered in employment tribunals, however the equality act is an encompassing act. As such contract cannot discriminate openly. this is more technical a defence than whether or not notice to keeps rules etc are severed properly.

Thats why I want to try and get some help as well as you knowledgeable people

Le_Kirk

That seems like a Letter Before Claim (LOC/LBC/LBA/LBCCC) as it has the financial forms (which you don't fill in) and presumably the Particulars of Claim (POC) so that you know exactly what the PPC is claiming you did wrong. You should not ignore it but read the following link to save you trawling through reams of (to you) unreadable text.

Within that you will find a link to the legal beagles website telling you how to submit a Subject Access Request to find out exactly what the PPC have on you and finally, this is copied from that post: -

A SAR is free. Ask for (as a minimum):

- ALL photos taken
- a close up of the signs on the day in question
- evidence that they have paid a debt collector, if they are trying to add £60 per PCN (they can't do that but will if YOU let them)
- all letters/emails sent and received, including any appeal correspondence earlier
- if the car park was Pay and Display, ALWAYS ALWAYS ask for a PDT machine record from that day, of payments made (VRNs can be partially redacted but insist on getting this and follow it up if they refuse). You want the PDT machine record if it;s an PDT machine car park.
- all data held, all evidence they will rely on, and a full copy of the PCN, NTK
- and a list of all PCNs they consider are outstanding against you and/or this VRN, and remind them that any claim must be for all PCNs in one claim, not several separate claims.

KeithP

PaddingtonB wrote: »

BTW starting to stress me know so want to know at what point i can request legal advise from my house insurance, is it when I receive a letter before claim or is this "letter of claim" with the 30 day reply form the definition of letter before claim is it implies ' it could result in court proceedings'.... please help explain this bit as its getting scary now

Ask your insurer for help when you like.

Yes, it does look like you can expect to have to defend a court case soon.

Coupon-mad

Don't let the house insurance legal advice tell you that the Beavis case means no parking ticket cases are defendable any more. I would be a bit concerned that a legal advice team might not be great at this (mine were not great when I sued Monarch over the Ash Cloud - I won, but I had to steer the legal advice firm quite a bit, even to correcting by a significant amount, the sum I was entitled to in compensation!).

So be prepared and know your facts and that you do have a case.

Go to the legal advice/help with your insurer only when you know how your case can be fully distinguished from Beavis, as I'd hate for you to fall at the first hurdle, with them wrongly saying you don't have more than 50% chance of success.

We manage 99% success rate, hundreds won over 2 years, so we prove it.

Are you confident about your case and how it differs from Beavis or do you need pointers?

PaddingtonB

yes need pointers please, how is it anything like beavis. i paid for ticket parked for less time than ticket time but missed a digit out even though the board with terms a conditions did not say that was part of the contract. due to my dyslexia their is a requirement to make reasonable adjustment. how is the anything like the bevies rolling which concerned overstay of time

Coupon-mad

It's nothing like Beavis, but I worry your legal advice helpline won't realise that, because Beavis as a Supreme Court decision. Maybe I am doing them a disservice!

I think you know all these things, but I would point to these differences in facts:


1. In Beavis, there was an overriding 'legitimate interest' that 'disengaged' the penalty rule and usually made the £85 charge recoverable, but the case was fact-specific re the legitimate interest and your case demonstrates there is none.


2. In Beavis, the Judges remarked at para 107 of the judgement, that:
''In our opinion the term imposing the £85 charge was not unfair. The term does not exclude any right which the consumer may be said to enjoy under the general law or by statute.''

In your case, you do of course have a right to a reasonable adjustment, and a right not the be penalised and harassed for something that could be said to have arisen due to a feature of your dyslexia. So THIS charge does offend against and exclude your rights that you enjoy under statute.


3. In Beavis, it was also said at para 32 that:

''The true test is whether the impugned provision is a secondary obligation which imposes a detriment on the contract-breaker out of all proportion to any legitimate interest of the {parking firm...I REFUSE to use their words: 'innocent party'!} in the enforcement of the primary obligation. The [STRIKE]innocent party[/STRIKE] {parking firm} can have no proper interest in simply punishing the defaulter. His interest is in performance or in some appropriate alternative to performance.''

Clearly in your case this is simply punishing drivers, looking for ways to screw more money out of them and indeed it's cause by their system!


4. In Beavis, the purpose of the scheme & charge, was to deter people from overstaying, and to free up spaces for the next shoppers, so it had a commercial justification. There is no such argument applicable in your case.


5. In Beavis, apart from the compelling 'legitimate interest/commercial justification excuse, the main thing that impressed the credulous (and IMHO naive) Judges was the evidence that the terms on the signs were VERY clear, brief and prominent, with the £85 in the largest/boldest size font.

Not so in this case, because we bet the machine and tariff list were either silent about £100 Parking Charge (it was no doubt on other signs but not on the PDT machine screen) or it was buried in small print, NOT on the tariff list (or in smaller font than the tariffs were). It was never an 'understandable ingredient' of the system that you could be fined and sued, due to their machine allowing a space then ignoring the final digit keyed.


6. Under the Equality Act you have 'protected characteristics', as I expect you know, and it's illegal to keep sending you unwarranted demands now that PPS know or should have known (from your appeal) about the issue, how it arose due to their machines & terms being skewed against drivers, and that you have a relevant disability that caused you not to notice what the machine (not you) had done.


7. Under the IPC Code of Practice, they told all their members about a year ago, that minor single digit errors like typing zero '0' instead of the letter 'O' were not breaches of contract and were 'de minimis'. The IPC said AOS members were not to pursue those sorts of cases. Arguably, yours is on all fours with that sort of 'single digit' very minor issue.


8. Even though the IPC/IAS (kangaroo court) didn't uphold it, the Claimant parking firm was never in any difficulty in matching your payment to the car, because at all material times, they had TWO data streams. One from the machine (showing the VRN with the missing final digit due to their machine accepting a space as if it was a digit) but the other data stream was from the ANPR images, where they knew all along what the right VRN was, of that car.


9. In Spurling v Bradshaw [1956] 1 WLR 461, Denning LJ held that a person will not be bound by terms of a contract of which he has not received reasonable notice: ''I quite agree that the more unreasonable a clause is, the greater the notice which must be given of it. Some clauses which I have seen would need to be printed in red ink on the face of the document with a red hand pointing to it, before the notice could be held to be sufficient''.


10. In a 'straightforward damages' case, the penalty rule stays engaged and trying to charge (say) 50 times more than the tariff would be punitive, unjustified and unconscionable, given these facts - and especially given your rights under the Equality Act.

In Beavis, at the earlier Court of Appeal stage, the CoA Judges said that a case regarding an ordinary transactional contractual fee (such as in a pay and display car park with a quantifiable tariff) was 'entirely different' from the 'complex' situation in a free car park.

The Supreme Court did not disagree with the CoA on that, so those words stand as part of the decision.

At the Court of Appeal:
Para 47: ''...When the court is considering an ordinary financial or commercial contract, then it is understandable that the law [...] should prohibit terms which require the payment of compensation going far beyond that which the law allows in the absence of any contract provision governing this outcome.''

- At the Supreme Court:
At para #22, the Supreme Court explored Lord Dunedin's speech in Dunlop: ''as Lord Dunedin himself acknowledged, the essential question was whether the clause impugned was unconscionable or extravagant. [...] The four tests are a useful tool for deciding whether these expressions can properly be applied to simple damages clauses in standard contracts.''

Para 32: ''...In the case of a straightforward damages clause, that interest will rarely extend beyond compensation for the breach, and we therefore expect that Lord Dunedin's four tests would usually be perfectly adequate to determine its validity.''

Para 108: ''But although the terms, like all standard contracts, were presented to motorists on a take it or leave it basis, they could not have been briefer, simpler or more prominently proclaimed. If you park here and stay more than two hours, you will pay £85''.

Para 199: ''What matters is that a charge of the order of £85 [...] is an understandable ingredient of a scheme serving legitimate interests.''

Para 205: ''The requirement of good faith in this context is one of fair and open dealing. Openness requires that the terms should be expressed fully, clearly and legibly, containing no concealed pitfalls or traps. Appropriate prominence should be given to terms which might operate disadvantageously to the customer.''