My defence discloses no reasonable grounds [CPR 3.4]

nosferatu1001

it is VrM not VRN. Mark not Number.

Youre lacking a huge chunjk of text about the abuse of process £60. As it stands I have no idea what you mean - were all the terms unknown? Just the extra £60? What?

You dont attach, you exhibit. You MUST read other WS to ensure you know how to exhibit documents properly.

I have no idea what 7 means. The judge may not know what "SAR" means either - you MUST define EVERY acronym the first time you use it. What do you mean "to which they part responded, excluding list of vehicle registration number log beginning XXXX... on [Date] at [Car Park]"
What is this point of exhibiting the entire SAR ersponse? What bit of the SAR response is relevant? Any of it? None? Given you said it was a partial response, si it the bits you included in the WS that are of help, or the bits they didnt?

Can you see how youre not writing a document for YOU, youre writing a document for someone with no real knowledge of the case. You cannot leave statements as ambiguous messes like you have above. You have to write precisely and concisely.

Your WS MUST suport every element of your defence. It is your ONE CHANCE to do so. THats as simple a concept to explain as possible.

UberThere

Thank you for the help guys, I have crated a new draft, adding / addressing the points mentioned.

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Witness Statement

1. I am [Name], of [Address], [Postcode], the Defendant in this matter. I will say as follows:

2. I assert that I am not liable to the Claimant for the sum claimed, or any amount at all, for the following reasons:

3. On [DATE], I parked my vehicle registration no [Reg Number] in the [Car Park Name] car park. Britannia Parking are arguing I was bound by unknown terms creating a contractual charge, yet this £60 was not a term known or agreed at the point of making the contract. The charges, which include an additional £60 per ticket (not specified on the signage), are arbitrary and an attempt to penalise motorists.

4. I did park in this car park but completed the required information on the keypad as instructed. I made reasonable endeavours and believed I entered my Vehicle Registration Mark (VRM) correctly.

5. Britannia Parking are required to make stringent checks before issuing a Parking Charge Notice (PCN), which should certainly avoid a PCN being issued for such as a close match VRM.

6. Britannia Parking are in the British Parking Association (BPA), who’s Code of Practice (CoP) tells operators to cancel parking charge notices, where it is that the parking charge had been caused by a simple keying error.

POPLA ANNUAL REPORT 2018, PAGE 7 APPENDED AS EVIDENCE: E.1

7. a) None of us agreed to any charge so this is surely just the sort of 'unconscionable' charge exposed as offending against the penalty rule, in the wholly different and 'complex' case of ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis [2015] UKSC 67 (the Beavis case) which can be fully distinguished from my case. In Beavis, ParkingEye did not rely upon any unproven keypad error as the excuse for a parking charge.

7 . b) At the Supreme Court at 107 it was stated: “In our opinion the term imposing the £85 charge was not unfair. The term does not exclude any right which the consumer may be said to enjoy under the general law or by statute” But in my case the 'parking charge' is not only unfair, disproportionate and unconscionable given the facts of the case (known by this Claimant to be true) but the fact is the charge was never agreed at the time the parking agreement was made.

7. c) The Britannia Parking sign does not meet the high bar set in the Beavis case, for 'a brief sign with the parking charge in the largest lettering'. You can see the tariffs are in the large font but the penalty was not, and was not near or on the screen of the 'point of sale' of the PDT machine, and that is where the contract was formed, after all.

BEAVIS SIGN & BRITANNIA PARKING SIGN APPENDED AS EVIDENCE: E.2

7. d) In the Beavis case, it’s stated that the parking charge already more than covers all the costs of the business model and creates a profit, not a loss or damages.

THE BEAVIS CASE PARAGRAPHS 98, 193, 198 APPENDED AS EVIDENCE E.3

8. In addition to the original parking charge, for which liability is denied, the Claimant has artificially inflated the value of the Claim from £100 to £245.70, in a clear attempt at double recovery including purported Solicitor's Costs of £50, which have not actually been incurred by the Claimant. The Defendant trusts that the presiding Judge will recognise this wholly unreasonable conduct as a gross abuse of process and may consider using the court's case management powers to strike the claim out of the court's own volition. The acid test is whether the conduct permits of a reasonable explanation, but the Defendant avers it cannot.

9. It is not an isolated judgment striking a parking claim out for repeatedly adding sums they are not entitled to recover. As in the Caernarfon Court in Case number FTQZ4W28 (Vehicle Control Services Ltd v Davies).

10. I also refer the Court to a judgement in Southampton Court by DJ Taylor (Claim No. F0DP201T, 10th June 2019) where this is highlighted as “abuse of process”, and a subsequent judgement by DJ Grand (Claim No. F0DP163T, 11th July 2019). This includes a BPA member serial Claimant, Britannia, using BW Legal's robo-claim model.

GENERAL FORM OF JUDGMENT OR ORDER APPENDED AS EVIDENCE: E.4
** Exhibit from #14 of beamerguy's Abuse of Process thread**

11. I put Britannia to proof of the machine readings, as parking firms comply with this request usually by redacting any clearly unconnected full VRMs on the list and leaving the other payments and mismatched/part VRMs or missing VRMs on the list, visible to the court.

12. This claim is meritless and just about a technicality that it de minimis at best and not a matter for the courts, and certainly not on a par with the Supreme Court case law, as there was an absence of any 'legitimate interest and commercial justification' that was a feature of the unusual ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis [2015] UKSC 67 case.

13. I also put Britannia to proof of their landowner authority to issue PCNs for 'non-contraventions', and I do not believe the landowner allows them to fine people who paid & displayed, only those who did not, or parked outside a bay, or overstayed. None of this happened and it is common ground that I paid all along and owe nothing.

14. I invite the Court to dismiss this claim in its entirety, and to award my costs of attendance at the hearing, such as are allowable pursuant to CPR 27.14.

Statement of Truth

I believe that the facts stated in this Witness Statement are true.

Signature
Date

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How does this version look? Any other pointers would be greatly appreciated, or if you think it's good to go, I will put the evidence together and send off as per the newbie's thread.

Thanks in advance

Le_Kirk

6. Britannia Parking are in the British Parking Association (BPA), [strike]who’s[/strike] whose Code of Practice (CoP) tells operators to cancel parking charge notices, where it is that the parking charge had been caused by a simple keying error.

Modify as above. Your version means who is, whilst mine is the possessive pronoun form of who, i.e. it belongs to the BPA. Small point but it needs to be correct.

Coupon-mad

THE BEAVIS CASE PARAGRAPHS 98, 193,

Well done for spotting I had typed the wrong Beavis case paragraph in my reply to you, and it's 193 that's needed as one of them, as you say:

22.1 “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...”

22.2 “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.”

22.3 “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.”

UberThere

Just an update on this one.

I have received the oppositions Witness Statement, in which they have provided a log of vehicle reg's which does not contain my VRM.

I'm left doubting myself as the whether I didn't put the wrong number in by a digit or not.

Should this be a big cause for concern or should I continue as normal?

Thank you

Castle

UberThere wrote: »

Just an update on this one.

I have received the oppositions Witness Statement, in which they have provided a log of vehicle reg's which does not contain my VRM.

Which may have been edited after the event!

Coupon-mad

We have seen edited 'payment logs'. Excel were held by a Judge to have altered one.

How about sending a SAR direct to the DPO of the PPC (not the solicitor) and asking for the payment log from the machine from that day, half an hour either side of your car's arrival, (without saying you've already seen a version)? State that they can partially redact the VRNs of cars except those that are not a near match or unmatched to a vehicle.

See if they match...

Do that by email immediately and it might come back in time for the hearing.

Now read CEC16's thread to see how those Beavis paras helped beat BW Legal's barrister, PLUS you now need to add to your bundle, schedule 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (and a copy of my court report from the 11th November hearing even if you only use it as a crib sheet for your speech).

The CRA 2015 stops any possibility of the PPC being allowed to claim an extra £60 on top of the parking charge, so think of it as insurance.

YOU ARE allowed to ambush with it on the day, para 71 of the CRA says so. The test of fairness is a duty on the court, whether a consumer mentions it or not.

Read the court report from CEC16's thread! Oh...and it was versus Britannia!!