Newcastle Airport UKPPO BW Legal collective defence group

BountyHunter

8 Abuse of Process – additional costs claimed

EXHIBIT B Parking Charge Notice DD.MM.YYYY
EXHIBIT D Letter of Claim DD.MM.YYYY
EXHIBIT G Claim Form DD.MM.YYYY
EXHIBIT N Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 – section 56, Schedule 4, part 9

8.1 The Claimant has added an additional £60.00 to the original PCN claim, described as both “initial legal costs” and “Total debt recovery costs” in the Letter of claim. The additional £60.00 is also listed as “contractual costs” in the Particulars of claim.
8.2 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.
8.3 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. 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.
8.4 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.
8.5 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.
8.6 The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4 (POFA) makes it clear 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).
8.7 It is submitted the Claimant is well aware their artificially inflated claim, as pleaded, constitutes double recovery.
8.8 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 an earlier General Judgment or Order of DJ Grand, who on 21st February 2019 sitting at the Newport (IOW) County Court, had struck out a parking firm claim. One was a BPA member serial Claimant (Britannia, using BW Legal's robo-claim model) and one an IPC member serial Claimant (UKCPM, using Gladstones' robo-claim model) yet the Order was identical in striking out both claims without a hearing:

''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...''


9 Summary

The Defendant has demonstrated to the Court that the Claimant has been unreasonable in their conduct on numerous points. 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.

I believe the facts stated in this witness statement are true.

xxxxxxx

Signature

DD.MM.YYYY

EXHIBIT A Defence
EXHIBIT B Parking Charge Notice DD.MM.YYYY
EXHIBIT C BWLegal Letter DD.MM.YYYY
EXHIBIT D Letter of Claim DD.MM.YYYY
EXHIBIT E Letter to BWLegal DD.MM.YYYY
EXHIBIT F BWLegal email response DD.MM.YYYY
EXHIBIT G Claim Form DD.MM.YYYY
EXHIBIT H BWLegal response to defence DD.MM.YYYY
EXHIBIT I Photos and aerial view of Newcastle Airport
EXHIBIT J Parking Control Management (UK) v Christopher Bull [2016] B4GF26K6
EXHIBIT K Laura Jopson v Homeguard Services Ltd [2016] 9GF0A9E
EXHIBIT L Consent order UKPPO v Bowman F0DP230M [2019]
EXHIBIT M IPC Code of Practice, Part B, section15, & Part E Schedule 1
EXHIBIT N Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 – section 56, Schedule 4, part 9
EXHIBIT O Park and Fly contract 1.6.2015
EXHIBIT P Newcastle International Airport Byelaws 2009 v2 – Section 6
EXHIBIT Q Airports Act 1986 – Section 65
EXHIBIT R Road Traffic Act 1988 - Part VII , section 192

BountyHunter

Also - what’s the best file sharing options- possibly create a Dropbox account just for the above attachments?

Umkomaas

grimnog wrote: »

BW Legal have just discontinued their action against me (I’m one of the 11 mentioned above). The notice of discontinuance literally landed on my doormat on Witness Statement submission deadline day, as I was walking out of the house to head to the court to submit my mammoth (circa 150 page) Witness Statement and exhibits. What a total waste of days and days of effort put into producing it! A huge amount of thanks goes to the group though for all their fab work and support, certain members in particular (you know who you are). If anyone out there would like to benefit from this great work, I’m happy to email my Witness statement pack and exhibits for them to use - someone might as well get good use out of all the hard work.

The resounding message is this: they will bully you, they will intimidate you and they will abuse the court processes to basically pressure people into paying. The whole process is incredibly scary and onerous on those of us who have never needed to defend themselves before, and they know it - that’s why they do it. They will persevere at nil or minimal cost to themselves, so that defendants have to put in incredible amounts of time and effort just to meet the court’s deadlines and jump through the administrative hoops presented. If ever you miss a hoop, you lose. They know it. The whole court process is a joke when it is abused in this fashion, but that’s the system. It’s frankly broken. The little man is effectively guilty by default.

Huge thanks must go to the regulars on forums such as these for their continual hard work at helping us push back against a system stacked against us. Anyone out there who is considering caving in and paying - please don’t! Fight all the way and use the support and help out there to assist you. And don’t doubt yourselves! The more they intimidate you and the more they threaten you, the more desperate they are becoming because they know they don’t have a case.

Good luck everybody and thanks again for all the help.

Brilliant post, and very well done in crystallising this entire scam in a few words. I'm not sure what a Judge would have made of your 150 page WS. But, let's not speculate too much on that!

Redx

BountyHunter wrote: »

Also - what’s the best file sharing options- possibly create a Dropbox account just for the above attachments?

yes , docs and attachments , or try pcloud or mega.nz instead of dropbox

BountyHunter

Redx wrote: »

yes , docs and attachments , or try pcloud or mega.nz instead of dropbox

Ok will try those thanks- might take a few days to put together.

grimnog

Umkomaas wrote: »

Brilliant post, and very well done in crystallising this entire scam in a few words. I'm not sure what a Judge would have made of your 150 page WS. But, let's not speculate too much on that!

It was a personalised version of BountyHunter’s above - the vast majority was the Exhibits. The IPC COP alone is about 35 pages and the Byelaws 20 pages. Waste of trees printing all that..... ��

Coupon-mad

BountyHunter wrote: »

How does this look & how do I set out the draft order?

Dear District Judge xxxxx

Re: BWLegal UKPPO Newcastle Airport Parking Claims

I am writing on behalf of a group of consumers who have recently been successful in gaining the dismissal or discontinuance of several Newcastle Airport Parking claims dating back to 2016.

The group of 25 was formed following research on the consumer help website Money Saving Expert, having realised we all had similar claims to defend.

I would like to draw your attention to the pattern of vexatious claims in the hope that further action can be taken.

Working collectively, with no previous knowledge of court proceedings, 11 claims were eventually discontinued, 6 dismissed at hearing (one of which was your own judgement), 1 struck out & 1 dropped following contesting jurisdiction.

The full progress is captured in the following forum:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5971217/newcastle-airport-ukppo-bw-legal-collective-defence-group

Details of the 6 cases dismissed at hearing……….

Based on the above, I am writing to ask you to consider an order using your own case management powers, debarring UKPPO from filing or continuing with any more Newcastle Airport claims, without the permission of the local Circuit Judge first, and only if they set out in what way any new cases differ from all those discontinued and beaten in court by consumers.

This is to protect future consumers from being unnecessarily harassed with meritless claims, and prevent any further ''abuse of process''.

I attach a draft order to review and thank you in advance for your consideration.

Your sincerely

Very good. Not sure it makes it clear which claim was yours (i.e. that you do have a vested interest as a Defendant yourself) which gives you a reason to complain.

Also you might want to mention that claims are being summarily struck out purely for adding sixty quid, and that summarily striking cases out for abuse of process (breach of the POFA, the CRA 2015 schedule 2, 'grey list of unfair terms/consumer notices' paras 6, 10 and 14) could be one way for the Newcastle area circuit to deal with these claims from now on, as has happened in Caernarfon, Southampton and now Warwick (see post #14 now edited in the ABUSE OF PROCESS thread by beamerguy).

Not wanting to make your letter too long though.

I've asked CEC16 to add DJ Grand's November Order to his thread so we can all use it.

cb9jde

Hi,


I have been following this thread for a number of months since I recieved the first PCN and want to say well done to all involved. It sounds like the contesting of the jurdisticton is the best way to go from what I can see but I was wondering why so many people chose to take the case to court rather than contest jurdistiction? it seems a lot more complicated. Anyway letter is now in the bin and I'll await the next one.


cheers

Redx

It costs £100 to contest jurisdiction , which you might not get back

YorkyDave

Indeed the signs were changed around the airport around July 2015. They previously read "Penalty Charge" and they were changed to read "Parking Charge" as did the PPN`s change also.
Even at one point there were Penalty Charge and Parking Charge notices together side by side. I took photos of these at the time.


The Penalty Notice I am dealing with is from May 2015 and been through the tread mill of the usual letters but no further.