**Court Summons** NCP - BW Legal ANPR Overstay

Quentin

Post #2 in the newbies FAQ thread should be your Bible till the hearing

All your questions are covered there.

Umkomaas

Bordtea wrote: »

Thank you. At what stage does the witness statement and evidence need to be submitted? Will there be a prompt from the Court?

What should the witness statement include?

Many thanks

Everything is covered already in the NEWBIES FAQ sticky, post #2. It saves having to type the same information out dozens of times a day.

The entire court process, from LBC to the hearing is there, much of it written by legally qualified contributor bargepole, so it has expert and legally correct advice.

Bordtea

KeithP - no, there is nothing in the letter that mentions a deadline to submit any documents?

Even after having read the newbies thread I am very unsure how to play this. The defendant was not the driver, they are only the registered keeper. How are they supposed to provide a statement of events if they weren't the one parking the car?

KeithP

Bordtea wrote: »

KeithP - no, there is nothing in the letter that mentions a deadline to submit any documents?

Then you need to either:

1. assume the deadline was yesterday and file and serve your Witness Statement and evidence forthwith, or
2. assume there is no deadline and just rock at the hearing with the stuff, or
3. phone the court and ask them why they have not supplied a deadline.

Quentin

Bordtea wrote: »

Even after having read the newbies thread I am very unsure how to play this. The defendant was not the driver, they are only the registered keeper. How are they supposed to provide a statement of events if they weren't the one parking the car?

In the FAQ #2 there is a section on the WS


The majority of defended cases here are with the Keeper as Defendant!

KeithP

Bordtea wrote: »

Even after having read the newbies thread I am very unsure how to play this. The defendant was not the driver, they are only the registered keeper. How are they supposed to provide a statement of events if they weren't the one parking the car?

The keeper's WS will tell the story from her point of view.

The keeper will have visited the site to see for herself that the signs are inadequate and will have taken several pictures as evidence of this.

The keeper will explain any inadequacies in the notice to keeper he received.

The keeper will dispute the extra charges the Claimant is trying to claim.

The keeper will report on what the driver has told her.

Etc., etc.

Bordtea

KeithP wrote: »

The keeper's WS will tell the story from her point of view.

The keeper will have visited the site to see for herself that the signs are inadequate and will have taken several pictures as evidence of this.

The keeper will explain any inadequacies in the notice to keeper he received.

The keeper will dispute the extra charges the Claimant is trying to claim.

The keeper will report on what the driver has told her.

Etc., etc.

That makes more sense - thank you. Was getting into a bit of a flap with this yesterday!

Coincidentally, came home to a letter today saying documents to be submitted to the court by 4pm on 19 July, which gives me 8 days. I'll start drafting something this weekend then and report back :-) Thanks again for your assistance

Bordtea

Good evening all. Below is a first stab at a witness statement. Grateful for comments. My submitted defence is on the previous page.

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Witness Statement

---

1. I am ----, the Defendant in this matter. I will say as follows:

2. The facts in this statement come from my personal knowledge. Where they are not within my own knowledge there are true to the best of my information and belief.

3. I assert that I am the registered keeper of the vehicle in question in this case. I was not the driver. I have knowledge of who the driver was on this occasion and have spoken to the driver to inform this witness statement.

4. This matter relates to a pay & display car park and on the material day, the driver bought a ticket for 1 hour in good faith in order to pay for legitimate use of the car park.

5. Upon returning to the car park, aware that they were running a little behind schedule and over the paid for time, the driver went to look for a method to redress the overstay. The driver attempted to read the confusing and excessively long terms and conditions as pictured in article 2 but could not find clear and coherent instructions to address the overstay.

6. The driver considered putting money into the machine for a further hour, but having seen it was an automated system concluded that this would not register, as the system would recognise it as being paid from the time the new ticket was printed, therefore leaving (at this point) a 15-20 minute gap where no parking was paid for.

7. Having since visited the site myself, it struck me that the system in place at the car park is designed to scam the innocent motorist by tricking them into overstaying and then hitting them with an exaggerated penalty. The car park in question combines a traditional pay & display system with a modern number plate recognition system, which is not made at all clear.

8. The act of displaying a physical ticket combined with no clear method to redress a short overstay tricks motorists who have legitimately paid for parking into leaving the car park, where they are captured by number plate recognition technology to work out how long they have spent inside the car park. This information is then compared against the system that records when a ticket was paid for, and for how long.

9. This technology, in the majority of honest car parks, is used to create a pay on exit scheme where the motorist pays at the end of the time parked for the actual time they have stayed in the car park. This means that only those who deliberately set out to park without paying get hit with a legitimate penalty.

10. The system that the Claimant employs at this car park has the opposite intent. It is designed to maximise revenue from honest, paying motorists by hitting them with excessive demands for money followed by threatening letters from debt collectors and dragging them through the courts; using the legal system as a tool of intimidation to make people submit and pay.

11. Furthermore, the signage in place at the site is woefully inadequate, as demonstrated by articles 1 and 2 attached. Article 1 is the signage deemed by the courts in the Beavis case to have satisfied the ‘Red Hand Rule’ referred to in my Defence. Article 2 is the terms & conditions signage employed at the car park in question. It is in tiny font and contains an excessive amount of wording such that no reasonable person would stand and read it all. It quite clearly does not satisfy the Red Hand Rule.

STATEMENT OF TRUTH I believe that the facts stated in this witness statement are true.

(Article 1 is the Beavis case sign, Article 2 is the complex T&Cs sign as per previous page)

Coupon-mad

3. I assert that I am the registered keeper of the vehicle in question in this case. I was not the driver. I have knowledge of who the driver was on this occasion and have spoken to the driver to inform this witness statement.

If they are not relying on the POFA (was the NTK a POFA one?) then you need to expand here as to why you are not liable in law, and adduce Henry Greenslade's words from the POPLA Annual Report 2015 about Understanding Keeper Liability.

You have also not shot down the fake added costs.

There are two judgments here from DJ Grand at the IOW/Southampton court circuit, that support the argument that the fake added costs are unrecoverable due to the POFA and the Beavis case. Find the DJ Grand judgments (not the wording, the actual PDF documents) and adduce them too, in the hope your Judge agrees.

Bordtea

Many thanks for your comments Coupon-Mad. Submitted the WS on time.

Also emailed both the Claimant and the court to inform them that the Defendant won't be attending the hearing (it's on Tuesday) and requested a paper hearing.

Is there anything else I can do now, or do I just sit tight and cross fingers? Can't say I'm overly confident...