Letter Before Claim From Gladstones

KeithP

GUNIT wrote: »

I have now received a claim form in the post...

What is the Issue Date on the Claim Form?

Did it come from the County Court Business Centre in Northampton, or from somewhere else?

GUNIT

KeithP wrote: »

What is the Issue Date on the Claim Form?

Did it come from the County Court Business Centre in Northampton, or from somewhere else?

Issue date is around the 5th and yes it is the Northampton Court.

Umkomaas

GUNIT wrote: »

Issue date is around the 5th and yes it is the Northampton Court.

In case you were not aware, the Northampton Court, from where the claim form emanated, is simply a bulk distribution centre for the issuing of paperwork for MCOL claims.

Any court hearing will be allocated to a county court close to where you live (you will have the opportunity to select that in some later paperwork to come your way after the submission of your defence).

Coupon-mad

You need to read the NEWBIES thread and bargepole's court procedures thread.

Le_Kirk

GUNIT wrote: »

Issue date is around the 5th and yes it is the Northampton Court.

KeithP will need the exact date of issue from the claim form is he is to help you with deadlines.

GUNIT

KeithP wrote: »

What is the Issue Date on the Claim Form?

Did it come from the County Court Business Centre in Northampton, or from somewhere else?

The issue date is the 6th Sept.

I am going to try put a defence together tonight. Just what I want to be doing after work.

KeithP

GUNIT wrote: »

The issue date is the 6th Sept.

With a Claim Issue Date of 6th September, and having done the Acknowledgement of Service in a timely manner, you have until 4pm on Wednesday 9th October 2019 to file your Defence.

That's over four weeks away. Plenty of time to produce a Defence, but please don't leave it to the last minute.


When you are happy with the content, your Defence could be filed via email as suggested here:

Print your Defence.
1. Sign it and date it.
   
2. Scan the signed document back in and save it as a pdf.
   
3. Send that pdf as an email attachment to CCBCAQ@Justice.gov.uk
   
4. Just put the claim number and the word Defence in the email title, and in the body of the email something like 'Please find my Defence attached'.
   
5. Log into MCOL after a few days to see if the Claim is marked "defence received". If not chase the CCBC until it is.
   
6. Do not be surprised to receive an early copy of the Claimant's Directions Questionnaire, they are just trying to keep you under pressure.
   
7. Wait for your DQ from the CCBC, or download one from the internet, and then re-read post #2 of the NEWBIES FAQ sticky thread to find out exactly what to do with it.

GUNIT

Thank you, that is really helpful

GUNIT

A little background on the claim:

I stopped for 1 minute, in that time a passenger got out and the car had left the area. I requested an SAR, the CCTV confirms the duration was for 1 minute. It also shows the signs were facing the opposite direction to the entrance the car came in. I also have photographic evidence of this. The writing on the signs are extremely small and would have to get out of the car to read it.
Previous defence emails from Gladstones have stated some of the following responses 'as the passenger left the vehicle to use the facilities on the site. The driver did not read any of of the Terms or Conditions on any of the signs around the relevant site.'
'Our Client provides customers a 10 minutes grace period to enter the site and review the TCs, if they do not agree with the TC they are free to leave the site and our Client would not issue them a PCN. However this is not the case in this instance. Therefore our Client believes they are abiding by their Accredited Trade Association, The British Parking Association's (BPA) code of practise.'
But on the Claim Form it just says 'parked in breach of the terms of parking stipulated on the signage thus incurring the parking charge'

***MY DEFENCE***

1. It is admitted that the defendant, XXXXXX XXXXX, is the registered keeper of the vehicle.

1.1. It is denied that there was any 'relevant obligation' or 'relevant contract' relating to any parking event, in fact it is denied that the car was actually parked/left for any period of time that can warrant any 'contractual parking charge'.

1.2. It is denied that any 'parking charges or indemnity costs' (whatever they might be) are owed. Any purported 'debt' is denied in its entirety.

2. The alleged parking charge relates to one minute whilst the vehicle was present at the stated location.

2.1. It was when the claimant checked the CCTV that they issued a predatory parking ticket.

3.The vehicle was present at the stated location for a total of 1 minute between entering the car park and the Invoice being issued, which can not be reasonably considered a ‘grace period’ in which time the driver may find a sufficiently legible sign, so as to ascertain the terms of use of the parking bays. This is in breach of the BPA code of practice, to which the claimant is an Accredited operator, and by which they must therefore abide. This code states 'If a driver is parking without your permission, or at locations where parking is not normally permitted they must have the chance to read the terms and conditions before they enter into the ‘parking contract’ with you. If, having had that opportunity, they decide not to park but choose to leave the car park, you must provide them with a reasonable grace period to leave, as they will not be bound by your parking contract’ a point that has been made to both the issuers of the invoice. Neither company has acknowledged this point and has intentionally pursued an illegitimate claim.

4.Further and in the alternative, it is denied that the claimant's signage sets out the terms in a sufficiently clear manner which would be capable of binding any reasonable person reading them. The signs where facing the opposite way from where the car entered.

5.The terms on the Claimant's signage are also displayed in a font which is too small to be read from a passing vehicle, and is in such a position that anyone attempting to read the tiny font would be unable to do so easily. It is, therefore, denied that the Claimant's signage is capable of creating a legally binding contract.


Costs on the claim - disproportionate and disingenuous

6. CPR 44.3 (2) states: ''Where the amount of costs is to be assessed on the standard basis, the court will –
(a) only allow costs which are proportionate to the matters in issue. Costs which are disproportionate in amount may be disallowed or reduced even if they were reasonably or necessarily incurred; and
(b) resolve any doubt which it may have as to whether costs were reasonably and proportionately incurred or were reasonable and proportionate in amount in favour of the paying party.

7. Whilst quantified costs can be considered on a standard basis, this Claimant's purported costs are wholly disproportionate and do not stand up to scrutiny.

8. The standard wording for parking charge/debt recovery contracts is on the Debt Recovery Plus website - ''no recovery/no fee'', thus establishing an argument that the Claimant is breaching the indemnity principle - claiming reimbursement for a cost which has never, in fact, been incurred. This is true, whether or not they used a third party debt collector during the process.

9. In fact it is averred that the Claimant has not paid or incurred such damages/costs or 'legal fees' at all. Any debt collection letters were a standard feature of a low cost business model and are already counted within the parking charge itself and there has been no legal advice or personal involvement by any solicitor in churning out this template claim.

10. The Parking Eye Ltd v Beavis case is the authority for recovery of the parking charge itself and no more, since that sum (£85 in Beavis) was held to already incorporate the minor costs of an automated private parking business model. There are no losses or damages caused by this business model and the Supreme Court Judges held that a parking firm not in possession cannot plead any part of their case in damages.

11. Unlike this mendacious and greedy Claimant, ParkingEye themselves took on board the Beavis case outcome and they never add fake costs on top of the parking charge. It is indisputable that an alleged 'parking charge' penalty is a sum which the Supreme Court found is already inflated to more than comfortably cover all costs. The case provides a finding of fact by way of precedent, that the £85 (or up to a Trade Body ceiling of £100 depending upon the parking firm) covers the costs of the letters, and all parking firms are very familiar with this case:

http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2015/67.html

“at para 98. {re ...The desirability of running that parking scheme at no cost, or ideally some profit, to themselves} ''Against this background, it can be seen that the £85 charge had two main objects. One was to manage the efficient use of parking space in the interests of the retail outlets, and of the users of those outlets who wish to find spaces in which to park their cars [...] The other purpose was to provide an income stream to enable ParkingEye to meet the costs of operating the scheme and make a profit from its services...''

at para 193. ''Judging by ParkingEye’s accounts, and unless the Chelmsford car park was out of the ordinary, the scheme also covered ParkingEye's costs of operation and gave their shareholders a healthy annual profit.''

at para 198. ''The charge has to be and is set at a level which enables the managers to recover the costs of operating the scheme. It is here also set at a level enabling ParkingEye to make a profit.''
”* Any purported 'legal costs' are also made up out of thin air. Given the fact that robo-claim solicitors and parking firms process tens of thousands of claims handled by an admin team or paralegals, the Defendant avers that no solicitor is likely to have supervised this current batch of cut & paste claims. The court is invited to note that no named Solicitor has signed the Particulars, in breach of Practice Direction 22, and rendering the statement of truth a nullity.

12. According to Ladak v DRC Locums UKEAT/0488/13/LA a Claimant can only recover the direct and provable costs of the time spent preparing the claim in a legal capacity, not any administration costs allegedly incurred by already remunerated administrative staff.

13. The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4 (POFA) makes it clear that the will of Parliament regarding parking on private land is that the only sum potentially able to be recovered is the sum in any compliant 'Notice to Keeper' (and the ceiling for a 'parking charge', as set by the Trade Bodies and the DVLA, is £100). This also depends upon the Claimant fully complying with the statute, including 'adequate notice' of the parking charge and prescribed documents served in time/with mandatory wording. It is submitted the claimant has failed on all counts and the Claimant is well aware their artificially inflated claim, as pleaded, constitutes double recovery.

14. Judges have disallowed all added parking firm 'costs' in County courts up and down the Country. In Claim number F0DP201T on 10th June 2019, District Judge Taylor sitting at the County Court at Southampton, echoed earlier General Judgment or Orders of DJ Grand, who (when sitting at the Newport (IOW) County Court in 2018 and 2019) has struck out several parking firm claims. These include a BPA member serial Claimant (Britannia, using BW Legal's robo-claim model) and an IPC member serial Claimant (UKCPM, using Gladstones' robo-claim model) yet the Orders have been identical in striking out both claims without a hearing, with the Judge stating: ''It is ordered that The claim is struck out as an abuse of process. The claim contains a substantial charge additional to the parking charge which it is alleged the Defendant contracted to pay. This additional charge is not recoverable under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4 nor with reference to the judgment in ParkingEye v Beavis. It is an abuse of process from the Claimant to issue a knowingly inflated claim for an additional sum which it is not entitled to recover. This order has been made by the court of its own initiative without a hearing pursuant to CPR Rule 3.3(4) of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998...''

15. That is not an isolated judgment striking a parking claim out for repeatedly adding sums they are not entitled to recover. In the Caernarfon Court in Case number FTQZ4W28 (Vehicle Control Services Ltd v Davies) on 4th September 2019, District Judge Jones-Evans stated:

''Upon it being recorded that Distract Judge Jones-Evans has over a very significant period of time warned advocates [...] in many cases of this nature before this court that their claim for £60 is unenforceable in law and is an abuse of process and is nothing more than a poor attempt to go behind the decision of the Supreme Court v Beavis which inter alia decided that a figure of £160 as a global sum claimed in this case would be a penalty and not a genuine pre-estimate of loss and therefore unenforceable in law and if the practice continued he would treat all cases as a claim for £160 and therefore a penalty and unenforceable in law it is hereby declared [...] the claim is struck out and declared to be wholly without merit and an abuse of process.''

16. In summary, the Claimant's particulars disclose no legal basis for the sum claimed and it is the Defendant's position that the poorly pleaded claim discloses no cause of action and no liability in law for any sum at all. The Claimant's vexatious conduct from the outset has been intimidating, misleading and indeed untrue in terms of the added costs alleged and the statements made, in trying to justify the unjustifiable.

17. There are several options available within the Courts' case management powers to prevent vexatious litigants pursuing a wide range of individuals for matters which are near-identical, with meritless claims and artificially inflated costs. The Defendant is of the view that private parking firms operate as vexatious litigants and that relief from sanctions should be refused.

The Court is invited to make an Order of its own initiative, dismissing this claim in its entirety and to allow such Defendant's costs as are permissible under Civil Procedure Rule 27.14 on the indemnity basis, taking judicial note of the wholly unreasonable conduct of this Claimant.


Statement of Truth:

I believe that the facts stated in this Defence are true.


Name

Signature


Date

beamerguy

Earlier in your thread you were told to search for ABUSE OF PROCESS. You have not mentioned this

Read post #14 on this thread and copy into your defence
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6014081/abuse-of-process-district-judge-tells-bwlegal