Court Claim Form

Dufflecoat

Hello


I have set up a new account as I haven't used this forum for a few years, but if any one can assist with the court claim form I have received would help a lot as I have been going through a lot of posts and am confused what to write as a defence.


Basically:


2014 the business me and my wife (She was employee at the time) run rented a small office with a parking space which we paid £50 a month (For the parking space specifically).


We received at the time a PCN for not displaying the permit, although we were never told of the apparent consequences of not displaying it and the sign aluding to this, I only discovered after the event and the sign and writing is very small and 11foot off the ground.


We never received any evidence the permit wasn't displayed, but as far as we know it was as it was always in the car. We shared the car and don't know who was driving it that day.


We dealt with many people at the time, one of whom had bought the fine of the parking company. Nothing ever came of it at the time and I remember at the time thinking as the charge had been sold to another company that was the end of it and binned any further correspondence.


As you can guess it re appeared this year from some legal company with a letter of claim. I responded to the letter of claim stating the fact we paid for parking, there was no proof permit wasn't there, etc etc and used some info from this forum.


We just got back cut and paste standard replies.


I responded again asking to see all the records held (data) and for them to explain why the supposed debt sold to another company is now back with the original parking company.


Another cut and paste reply ignoring the other companys involved and we then got a data pack of all the stuff they had previously sent us, but no evidence of car not having permit etc.


So basically ignoring anything we said.


A couple of months go past and we now get the court claim official stuff.


I don't know what to write and very confused as to whether I go for the simple explanation approach or try and put together a legal letter I don't properly understand.


I have pictures of the signage from 2014 (Still backed up in the business). I can prove the signs have changed etc


Do I include all the sign photos (now and then) plus the rental of the parking space documents with the defence?


I am worried the defence is going to be like a big bundle of things and who ever makes the decision will not have time to look at it.


Also we are worried that if we lose in court, it will affect our credit rating. I suspect this is why they keep pursuing the claim as people cant take the risk of loosing.


The charge is £160 (£100 + £60 late fee or something) + £60 (contractural costs) + £25 court fee + Interest from 2014.


I don't know how on earth it is okay for these companies to be going back 5 years trying to claim these amounts when we never heard any responses to all the companies that supposedly bought the debt previously.


Presumably they don't have any evidence anyway as wouldn't I have received this when I asked for all data held to be sent to me?


If any one has any advice I would be very grateful, I don't want to pay it, but I don't want our credit rating to be stuffed if we don't and then lose in court?


Regards

Coupon-mad

They can take 6 years to file a claim, but you can beat this with our help!

Which parking firm?

What is the issue date of the claim?

You say you don't know what to write but all you do is add the below (changed into the third person 'The Defendant' - not ''I'', ''me'' or ''we'') to bargepole's concise defence from the NEWBIES thread post #2:

2014 the business me and my wife (She was employee at the time) run rented a small office with a parking space which we paid £50 a month (For the parking space specifically).


We received at the time a PCN for not displaying the permit, although we were never told of the apparent consequences of not displaying it and the sign aluding to this, I only discovered after the event and the sign and writing is very small and 11foot off the ground.


We never received any evidence the permit wasn't displayed, but as far as we know it was as it was always in the car. We shared the car and don't know who was driving it that day.


We dealt with many people at the time, one of whom had bought the fine of the parking company. Nothing ever came of it at the time and I remember at the time thinking as the charge had been sold to another company that was the end of it and binned any further correspondence.


As you can guess it re appeared this year from some legal company with a letter of claim. I responded to the letter of claim stating the fact we paid for parking, there was no proof permit wasn't there, etc etc and used some info from this forum.


We just got back cut and paste standard replies.


I responded again asking to see all the records held (data) and for them to explain why the supposed debt sold to another company is now back with the original parking company.

...then add the words I wrote in post #14 of beamerguy's ABUSE OF PROCESS BW LEGAL thread that is on page one or two right now, that's how to end it.

Job done, show us your efforts, and tell us when you have done the AOS on MCOL that the NEWBIES thread explains how to do, in pictures.

The_Deep

and the sign and writing is very small and 11 foot off the ground.

A slam dunk win for you on that point alone surely.

They are claiming far more than the law allows, read these

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6014081/abuse-of-process-district-judge-tells-bwlegal

If they are daft enough to take this to court, imo they will crash and burn. You credit rating cannot be tarnished unless you deliberately flout a court order, which, as I have said, is most unlikely to be forthcoming.

Add to the pressure on them, get your MP on side. as nine times out of ten these tickets are scams.

Parliament is well aware of the MO of these private parking companies, many of whom are former clampers, and on 15th March 2019 a Bill was enacted to curb the excesses of these shysters. Codes of Practice are being drawn up, an independent appeals service will be set up, and access to the DVLA's date base more rigorously policed, persistent offenders denied access to the DVLA database and unable to operate.

Hopefully life will become impossible for the worst of these scammers, but until this is done you should still complain to your MP, citing the new legislation.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/8/contents/enacted

Just as the clampers were finally closed down, so hopefully will many of these Private Parking Companies

beamerguy

The charge is £160 (£100 + £60 late fee or something) + £60 (contractural costs) + £25 court fee + Interest from 2014.


Are you sure there are 2 lots of £60 added, there is no such thing as a late fee and there is no such thing as £60 contractual costs

Interest, that would be up to the court to decide why they took so long in taking this to court and are they attempting to make extra profit

Who is the legal. we know all the dodgy legals on here

Dufflecoat

Hi


Thanks for all the replies so far this is helping a lot and I am putting together the full defence now and will post the draft:


Parking firm is Premier Park Limited.


Their legal representatives are BW Legal




With regard the charges looking through the paperwork we have:


£100 PCN
£60.00 Initial Legal Costs
Interest costs
£60.00 Contractual Costs (Although weirdly this is only showing as £50 on the court forms totals)
£25.00 Court Fee


Regards

nosferatu1001

£50 will be the fee for filing.

Go through and add up all the figures and see if you can reach the total shown in the bottom right.

Dufflecoat

Hi


Ah okay, it appears it is


£100 PCN
£60 Contractual Costs
£25 Court Fee
£50 Legal Representatives costs
+ Interest


I am not putting the interest amount on the forum directly as this is probably unique to my case?


In the court boxes it has


£160 (Presumably the PCN plus the £60 Contractual Costs + Interest
£25 (Court Fee)
£50 (Legal representatives costs)


Regards

beamerguy

Dufflecoat wrote: »

Hi


£160 (Presumably the PCN plus the £60 Contractual Costs + Interest
£25 (Court Fee)
£50 (Legal representatives costs)


Regards

OK, simple, the £60 is not allowed

This additional charge is not recoverable under the protection of freedoms act 2012, Schedule 4

Abuse of Process ... District Judge tells BWLegal
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6014081/abuse-of-process-district-judge-tells-bwlegal

In post#14 coupon-mad has written a text which you include in your defence

You are being scammed

Umkomaas

Standard listing.

You need to get your head around challenging the 'Contractual Cost'. Please read beamerguy's thread on Abuse of Process, especially Coupon-mad's post #14 in it about the recent court cases in Southampton and Caernarfon.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6014081/abuse-of-process-district-judge-tells-bwlegal

Dufflecoat

Hi


Thanks for all the help, it was starting to get worrying for me and am I now hoping it is just a painful attempt to extort money and we should be successful in court. We were paying for the parking a reasonable sum and at the least the car would have been recongnisable to the chap who put the PCN on the car as it was often parked there!


I have put together the following with the added bits from the Abuse of Process thread. Please note I am the husband preparing this on behalf of my wife who has even less idea what to do about all of this!


(I am assuming I should include all the back up with the defence, the pictures of the signs and the rental agreement etc. Do I need to include all the correspondence from the legal company?)




In 2014 the business the defendant and my husband worked for and owned, rented a small office with a parking space which we paid £50 a month (For the parking space specifically).


(See Enclosed rental agreement showing parking was paid for at £50 a month.)



The defendant received at the time a PCN for not displaying the permit, although the defendant was never told of the apparent consequences of not displaying it. The defendant only became aware of a sign after the event and the sign and writing is very small and 11 foot off the ground hence it being very difficult to see let alone read. (See Picture Enclosed)

The defendant never received any evidence the permit wasn't displayed, but as far as the defendant knows it was always in the car. The defendant shared the car with the defendant’s husband and therefore the defendant does not know who was driving the car that day.

The defendant dealt with many companies and debt recovery companies at the time in 2014 and 2015, one of whom had bought the charge from the parking company. Nothing ever came of it at the time and the defendant remembers at the time, thinking as the charge had been sold to another company that was the end of it and disposed of any further correspondence.

As you can guess it re appeared this year from BW Legal with a letter of claim. The defendant responded to the letter of claim stating the fact we paid for parking, there was no proof the permit wasn’t displayed, the signage was not clear as it was very small and high up.


The defendant notes that the signs have since been changed and can be shown to have now changed by the pictures dated from Google Street View.


(See Enclosed printouts)

The defendant just received back cut and paste standard replies.

The defendant responded again asking to see all the records held (data) and for them to explain why the supposed debt sold to another company is now back with the original parking company.


The defendant has not received any explanation of this.


With regard the costs and the additional charges the defendant has been advised to include the following details:


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.

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.

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.

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.

The Parking Eye Ltd v Beavis case that BW Legal refer to 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.

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.
LINK


Quoting from the above source


“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.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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...''

* 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.''

* 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.

* 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 (**or change to 'Witness Statement') are true.


Name

Signature


Date

Le_Kirk

Your defence needs to follow the format of those in the NEWBIE sticky, particularly the concise defences written by Bargepole, then you add your own specific circumstances but stick to legal/technical points. The extraneous stuff, the narrative, i.e. what happened around the permit and parking issue is saved for the Witness Statement and evidence (including photos) stage. Nothing is sent with the defence.