Letter before claim from Gladstones

Umkomaas

For what reason are you questioning Right of Audience? Are you able to argue RoA from the legal/technical standpoint, do you have the knowledge and understanding to do so in order to convince a Judge to dismiss the advocate?

And even if successful, often you might be having your best ally (a totally hapless and ill-prepared claimant rep) 'gagged' and unable to put his/her foot in their own mouth!

NorfolkBOI

Make sure to take the legal gazette article and or the case with the right of audience issues as from the sounds of it this DJ does not sounds very sympathetic so far.

Joey_Santiago

Good points on the RoA, when to bring up the late/misleading WS though?

NorfolkBOI

Surely it should be at the start just in case the DJ for some reason did not read anything before or a few days before..

It sounds bizarre but maybe under time pressure the judge may not realise and let it slide for an easy life.

Lets be up front they do these WS late for strategic advantage there is no other reason.

With no good reason for the delay in handing in the WS (sickness for litigant in person/staggering new evidence which is unlikely) then there should be a sanction.

The court should then consider admissibility on the basis of the Denton criteria

Part of that is.....

Whether, and how promptly, the opposing party (you) was told of the development. (SWEET FA)

Whether the statement has been served late deliberately and/or in an attempt to gain a strategic advantage. (OBVIOUS)

https://www.lambchambers.co.uk/news-and-resources/relief-from-sanctions-denton-v-th-white-ltd-2014-ewca-civ-906.htm

https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part03#3.9

3.9

(1) On an application for relief from any sanction imposed for a failure to comply with any rule, practice direction or court order, the court will consider all the circumstances of the case, so as to enable it to deal justly with the application, including the need –

(a) for litigation to be conducted efficiently and at proportionate cost; and

(b) to enforce compliance with rules, practice directions and orders.

(2) An application for relief must be supported by evidence.

General power of the court to rectify matters where there has been an error of procedure
3.10 Where there has been an error of procedure such as a failure to comply with a rule or practice direction –

(a) the error does not invalidate any step taken in the proceedings unless the court so orders; and

(b) the court may make an order to remedy the error.

********

At the end of the day it does happen and if not for you then maybe those coming later...

If they routinely do this (and this forum shows that they do) then highlighting it may prove very beneficial when the DJ gets to claim 100 of the 500 he has

nosferatu1001

Indeed, you should have already written to the court ot object to the late service, and ask the court to not excuse the C from sanctions

IF it is allowed in:

Your skelton can highlight that the Cs evidence, given under a statment of truth, is a knowing falsehood and ask that their evidence be given less weight as you cannot trust their testimony.

Joey_Santiago

Ok thanks, yep I have already submitted a skeleton argument which addressed those points so I will bring that up before we start.

Joey_Santiago

I won! Case dismissed on a technicality. The result I wanted but not for the right reason.

I started getting all my papers out and the judge immediately said you probably don’t need them. Before I could do any of my preliminary bits he started talking about the land permission document in their WS and the fact that the NPE signature was also duplicated for the landowner. Within a minute the case was dismissed. I had half expected that as a chap in our FB group had the same result last week.

Good result but there's so many other people in this position locally I wanted to get as much info as possible so I started asking questions about all my WS points as a ‘if you hadn’t dismissed the case what would you have thought about…'

Signage
This judge is definitely of the opinion that if there is a sign on the entrance telling you it is managed then it's up to you to find the terms. I pointed out that the initial sign had been turned the wrong way but that didn’t seem to sway him much. He talked a lot about ‘fly parking’ and the rights of landowners and private land.

I asked directly if he had reviewed the contract and decided that the signs were fair and he nodded. It was already becoming obvious he wanted to move on so if we had still been in the court process before dismissal he may have given this more thought.

Change of signage - breach of code of conduct.
He said that was the best point in my argument and I felt like it could have been a winning bit of evidence had I needed it. I had no proof they didn't put up temp signage when they added the new terms but it was a strong point

Abuse of Process
Surprisingly no joy at all. I really pressed the point about the other DJ's finding against this and asked why his opinion differed. His response was that it could have been a deputy or something which happened on the day but you can’t ‘cherry pick’ cases like that. I hope at least I’ve made him think about it and if it keeps getting brought up that might change. I did ask directly if he had read my supplementary WS dealing with it and he had.

I was really pushing my luck by this point but asked about the lateness of their WS and the false evidence within it which is what I had wanted to start with. By this stage both the DJ and the ‘agent’ were just repeating ‘the case has been dismissed’ to my questions.

The agent had said nothing else the entire time so as I was packing up I asked him if he was employed by Gladstones. He shook his head and the judge, obviously very irritated by this stage said ’no, he’s an agent for them’.
This confirms there’s no point bringing up the ‘Right of Audience’ point with this DJ.

So I won but I think without the technicality it would have been a close thing and may not have gone my way.

He still obviously takes a pretty dim view of the operations of NPE and said he would be making some recommendations to them which should improve things in the future.

This is just one judge in Norwich but it looks like he's not playing ball with either the lack of signage angle or the AOP. If the case hadn't already been dismissed I may have been able to argue those points to a greater degree but to him it was just time wasting.

Umkomaas

Well done, great result, whichever way it has been achieved.

Abuse of Process
Surprisingly no joy at all. I really pressed the point about the other DJ's finding against this and asked why his opinion differed. His response was that it could have been a deputy or something which happened on the day but you can’t ‘cherry pick’ cases like that. I hope at least I’ve made him think about it and if it keeps getting brought up that might change. I did ask directly if he had read my supplementary WS dealing with it and he had.

Good on you for raising this. It may not have been the 'Eureka' moment, but I'd hope it's got him thinking.

Did you get your costs awarded?

beamerguy

Well done, it was a win, another loss to Gladstones

Sounds like the judge was pretty peed off with Gladstones and the rubbish they take to court

I do feel sorry for the "wet behind the ears" legals Gladstones send to court

Onwards and upwards to the next Gladstones spanking

Coupon-mad

Brilliant! ANOTHER NPE ONE BITES THE DUST!

Slightly dodgy Judge though. DJ Grand is not a deputy Judge and the Consumer Rights Act and POFA are law, and the Beavis case proves that to add costs is double recovery.

If someone loses at Norwich court v NPE, yet they have fielded the Abuse of Process /double recovery/CRA angle and the Judge dismisses that, I hope one of the group will appeal with our help, to get a higher Circuit Judge to look properly at the law an provide the lesser Judges with a persuasive opinion.

In my view it is IMPOSSIBLE to conclude that a PPC can add 'operational costs'.