Court tomorrow help please

KeithP

Did you not get a letter from the court saying something like:

Each party must deliver to every other party and to the court office copies of all documents on which he intends to rely at the hearing no later than [ . . . ] [14 days before the hearing].

Scottpr

KeithP wrote: »

Did you not get a letter from the court saying something like:

Yes in the same letter as my above post

KeithP

Then that was the letter from the court that told you when you had to submit your Witness Statement and evidence.

Coupon-mad

I received a witness statement from gladstones solicitors on the 9th April

So they complied.

but nothing since from the court

You wouldn't expect to, they gave you clear instructions and a court date.

Hopefully you will find a canny Judge who can see an 'out' for you based on:

- your defence, and
- the predatory nature of PCM's ticketing which is against the IPC Code of Practice which you might get away with raising, since it cannot possibly be objected that PCM's own Trade Body code is news to them:

https://theipc.info/code-of-practice

Read it now, the bit about predatory ticketing the the requirement to observe a car for ten minutes grace period before ticketing. Print out some pages from it in TRIPLICATE (you, the Judge and the Claimant's rep if they bother to send anyone - they might be banking on you running scared as you offered no evidence, so maybe it will just be you and the Judge speaking about their rubbish evidence!).

Also look closely NOW for the hour before bed, looking at their WS and evidence, and look how to criticise it.

How rubbish are the signs:

(a) is the parking charge in small print?

(b) what about the sparseness of signs near the van? Were they near/legible?

(c) were they worded in a way that PROHIBITS parking if 'unauthorised', rather than offering a contract (read this and try this argument ad hoc!):

http://parking-prankster.blogspot.com/2016/04/pcm-uk-signage-does-not-create-contract.html

Print that off to remind yourself (have it in Triplicate as the Judge MIGHT let you mention it as it's a PCM case, so again you can answer any objection from the rep by saying they can hardly say it's a case they don't know about!) and print off the actual court transcript x 3 as well:

http://www.parking-prankster.com/case-law.html

3rd case from bottom - READ IT with a cuppa before bed, understand it. PRINT IT x 3.

You said yourself, the road was unmarked, so you can say your position is there were no yellow lines as you would expect on what looked like a public road, to alert you to signs and you had NO IDEA you could be bound by a 'parking charge' under a contract you'd never had the chance to read, and you were in fact unloading anyway.

You might get away with this and get your miracle, as it's PCM who issue PCNs after 2 minutes observation - look at the times on the photo evidence and be ready to expose that as a breach of the IPC CoP on grace periods...

I hope you get a nice Judge who understands you've never done this before and had no idea.

If not, if it all goes wrong and you can tell, MOVE ON to the added fake costs and use the link I showed you that sums up why they can't add made up 'damages' pretending they've expended 'extra costs' on sending the very letters that the PARKINGEYE v BEAVIS case said were part and parcel of a very profitable parking business model.

i.e. P/Eye made about 80% profit from their 'parking charge' and the minimal cost of the debt chasing letters was part of that model, and the Beavis case (which is NOT like your case - he lost, he saw the contract and the signs were not 'forbidding/prohibitive') shows that ONLY the parking charge itself is recoverable and a parking firm cannot plead their case as if those same letters have caused them 'damages' as well as profit!

Make sense?

Hope you get all that. Read it a few times and fire up the printer.

Take a WAGE SLIP with you and if by some miracle you win, ASK FOR YOUR COSTS for loss of leave/salary for attending, plus your travel & parking (prove it all, take it with you).

Expect a slap for not filing a WS/evidence, but rise above that if you can and wing it.

Scottpr

Thanks for your help people, i'm fearing the worst for tomorrow I think I should of come on this group months ago and got my self better prepared but unfortunately i'm not as clued up as the rest of you and didn't know, i'll remember for next time! I'm expecting a rather large fine tomorrow but i'll suck it up and learn from my mistakes!
I'll update you all on the inevitably bad outcome tomorrow

Thanks anyway much love

couriervanman

Scottpr wrote: »

Thanks for your help people, i'm fearing the worst for tomorrow I think I should of come on this group months ago and got my self better prepared but unfortunately i'm not as clued up as the rest of you and didn't know, i'll remember for next time! I'm expecting a rather large fine tomorrow but i'll suck it up and learn from my mistakes!
I'll update you all on the inevitably bad outcome tomorrow

Thanks anyway much love

Its not a fine and if you don't pay it nobody is going to come after you.....you might get a ccj

Coupon-mad

Scottpr wrote: »

Thanks for your help people, i'm fearing the worst for tomorrow I think I should of come on this group months ago and got my self better prepared but unfortunately i'm not as clued up as the rest of you and didn't know, i'll remember for next time! I'm expecting a rather large fine tomorrow but i'll suck it up and learn from my mistakes!
I'll update you all on the inevitably bad outcome tomorrow

Thanks anyway much love

I think I've given you a lifeline or two so I hope you grasped them.

Scottpr

OK so as I expected I lost, although the judge did reduce the claim from £825 to £610

Now i'm trying to decide wether or not to appeal and would like your help please as I think I may have a case but would like the opinion of someone more in the know than me!

My main arguments were 2 fold;

1. I wasnt given a fair chance to appeal as the first I heard about any potential breaches (2 in november 2017 and 2 in april 2018) was in november 2018, 12 months after the first alleged breach.

The solicitor for PCM stated and I quote "PCM are not legally obliged to serve notice, but they tend to do it out of courtesy"

I wholly disputed this and the judge did also but finally on summing up agreed with the PCM solicitor


2. I am a delivery driver and was making my deliveries at the time of the alleged breaches and I argued that I wasnt' parked, merely stopped to unload then carried on. I was stopped for 5-10 minutes max.and as there is no restrictions to loading/unloading on there signage I didn't breach any terms of the use of the land. They PCM solicitor argued that loading/unloading constitutes parking and as such I was in breach.
Upon Summing up the judge stated that "It is completely absurd that there is no reasonable place for a delivery driver to park and make there deliveries but as there is no legal precedence set out in any previous cases, my hands are tied and unfortunately I have to find in favour of the claimant"


So my question to you is, do I have grounds for appeal and is it worth my time or should I just suck it up and pay the £610? what would you do?

BrownTrout

Sorry you lost, but you dont have any grounds to appeal this.....
If you care about your credit file you will need to pay within 28 days
How many parking tickets was this for btw?, it must have been multiple tickets for that amount...

Scottpr

BrownTrout wrote: »

Sorry you lost, but you dont have any grounds to appeal this.....
If you care about your credit file you will need to pay within 28 days
How many parking tickets was this for btw?

Thank you for your reply but can you explain why I don't have any grounds for appeal?

I feel I wasn't able to fairly represent my self ( both the judge and the PCM solicitor had quite a large (100 pages+) witness statement which I had no access to either prior or during the hearing)

I wasn't afforded the opportunity to appeal the first ticket as I wasn't aware of it until a year later (if I had known then there is a good chance that the subsequent 3 wouldn't of occurred)