BW Legal CCJ Please Help!

KeithP

mothercourage wrote: »

Also, what is a DQ? Im guessing I should of had one by now so should call the courts in the morning to find out where it is????

DQ = Directions Questionnaire.

You will not get a Directions Questionnaire until after you have filed your Defence.

This is all explained in bargepole's 'what happens when' post linked from post #2 of the NEWBIES thread.

There's a link to that thread in my earlier post.


Also, you haven't mentioned it, but if you have not done the Acknowlegment of Service, you need to do it now - today.

mothercourage

Yes did my AoS last week, Nice one!

Coupon-mad

UK CAR PARK MANAGEMENT LTD (Claimant)

Is it?

Just checking you have put the right Claimant firm? In 2015 that retail park had TPS there, not UKCPM:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/68866806#Comment_68866806

Remove the forum glitches you copied as if they meant something!

!!!8220;

Change your point #2 and put the facts of the case (alleged overstay of xx minutes?) and no mention of permits. Not relevant to your case.

Do I add this in???

10. I have used the Heritage Car Park to purchase food from the BnM store which I presumes owns the land and thus in my mind had done my bit by paying towards upkeep etc. I have then taken my Daughter for her lesson at the public swimming baths which does not have a carpark of its own. The local library is in the same building as the swimming baths so we spent a short time reading and returning books there before leaving with our van. I do not believe this warrants such a fine.

No. Not least because it talk about about a fine and blabs about who was driving, and is written in the first person, which you can see is not how to write a defence. And that story adds nothing useful for you.
11.

With these figures do I still use the abuse of process? If so would it be the £54?

Yes.

Should I copy and paste all of coupon mads #14 post on abuse of process

Yes, I wrote it for people to copy and whilst it is long, it means hopefully, that NEWBIES will not forget to then append the case judgments mentioned, when it comes to your later WS, and you will have said all you need to know about the unrecoverable costs.

The claim for only has one time written on, I think it is the departure time from the carpark, not the arrival time, so if they think I have over stayed, should they have written this? It just says contravention occurred on date at 15:15. They must have my arrival time but is this something that should/could be mentioned?

No, but when you get the SAR from Tito you will know the timings. We assume you have now (as the NEWBIES thread tells you to) sent a SAR to get all the paperwork from him, assuming I am right and this was in fact TPS (Tito's lot)?

mothercourage

Thanks for reading through everything!!


No its not UK CarPark...

It is BW Legal and Total Parking Solutions.


I havent filled in all the personal bits yet.
So the glitchey looking bits I will change to Vehicle Reg etc


They havent specified an over stay time on the claim, it just reads contravention at 15:15 not the arrival time, which I cant remember and dont have any previous paper work from them. Kick:eek:ing myself now.



I have requested SAR but heard nothing back yet.


I dont know what Titos Lot is but it is Total Parking Solutions.



Is it worth complaining to BnM?


I will ammend Defence and get back to you.

mothercourage

Defence #2






IN THE COUNTY COURT

CLAIM No: xxxxxxxxxx

BETWEEN:

Total Parking Solutions LTD (Claimant)

-and-

xxxxxxxxxxxx (Defendant)

________________________________________
DEFENCE
________________________________________

1. The Defendant denies that the Claimant is entitled to relief in the sum claimed, or at all.

2. The facts are that the vehicle, registration XXXX, of which the Defendant is the registered keeper, was parked on the material date in a bay at the Heritage Retail Park, Crewe, Cheshire.

3. The Particulars of Claim state that the Defendant was the registered keeper and/or the driver of the vehicle. These assertions indicate that the Claimant has failed to identify a Cause of Action, and is simply offering a menu of choices. As such, the Claim fails to comply with Civil Procedure Rule 16.4, or with Civil Practice Direction 16, paras. 7.3 to 7.5. Further, the particulars of the claim do not meet the requirements of Practice Direction 16 7.5 as there is nothing which specifies how the terms were breached.

4. Due to the sparseness of the particulars, it is unclear as to what legal basis the claim is brought, whether for breach of contract, contractual liability, or trespass. However, it is denied that the Defendant, or any driver of the vehicle, entered into any contractual agreement with the Claimant, whether express, implied, or by conduct.

5. Further and in the alternative, it is denied that the claimant's signage sets out the terms in a sufficiently clear manner which would be capable of binding any reasonable person reading them. They merely state that vehicles must be parked correctly within their allocated parking bay, giving no definition of the term 'correctly parked', nor indicating which bays are allocated to whom.

6. The terms on the Claimant's signage are also displayed in a font which is too small to be read from a passing vehicle, and is in such a position that anyone attempting to read the tiny font would be unable to do so easily. It is, therefore, denied that the Claimant's signage is capable of creating a legally binding contract.

7. The Claimant is put to strict proof that it has sufficient proprietary interest in the land, or that it has the necessary authorisation from the landowner to issue parking charge notices, and to pursue payment by means of litigation.

8. The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4, at Section 4(5) states that the maximum sum that may be recovered from the keeper is the charge stated on the Notice to Keeper, in this case a principal balance £70. The claim includes an additional £104, for solicitors and recovery costs which appears to be an attempt at double recovery.

9. In summary, it is the Defendant's position that the claim discloses no cause of action, is without merit, and has no real prospect of success. Accordingly, the Court is invited to strike out the claim of its own initiative, using its case management powers pursuant to CPR 3.4.

10. Abuse of process - In addition to the 'parking charge', the Claimant has artificially inflated the value of the Claim by adding costs of £54 which has not actually been incurred by the Claimant, and which are artificially invented figures in an attempt to circumvent the Small Claims costs rules using double recovery. Similar case: Claim number is F0DP201T District Judge Taylor
Southampton Court, 10th June 2019



“
Costs on the claim - disproportionate and disingenuous

* 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 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:

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 District 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.

I believe the facts contained in this Defence are true.

Name
Signature
Date

1505grandad

The stars mean that the Abuse of Process paras should be numbered accordingly.

Redx

Tito runs TPS parking

Coupon-mad

I changed the hyphens to asterisks in the abuse of process post, to make it clear to newbies to number those paragraphs.

How does this happen so often, I feel like deleting it as we waste sooo much time telling people to put numbers in on every thread, even though the post tells people to number it all!

Obviously they can't be left as starts/asterisks in an actual defence. It doesn't need legal knowledge to realise this, given the rest of a defence is all numbered paragraphs.

mothercourage

Appologies for the stress. Trying to understand everything and write a defence late at night through blurry eyes isnt the best way of doing this but I am struggling to find any time to do it during the days.

Will keep at it though and hopefully come up with something worthy soon enough.


TPS have been in touch about SAR said it could take 4 weeks and have asjed for a copy of log book as ID, I dont have the log book for the vehicle though as I sold it, do you think my new log book would be enough?


thanks again

Le_Kirk

mothercourage wrote: »

TPS have been in touch about SAR said it could take 4 weeks and have asjed for a copy of log book as ID, I dont have the log book for the vehicle though as I sold it, do you think my new log book would be enough?

They need the V5C to prove that you are the RK of the vehicle involved in the claim so no point sending a different one. You could try sending a copy of the claim - surely that proves who you are - along with a redacted copy of your council tax bill. Do not send passport or driving licence. Passports don't have addresses on and they don't have your photo so to what are they going to compare it?