Help with defense

Coupon-mad

borgon_baxter wrote: »

Would i pay for a subject access request? I’m assuming that they would only be pursuing this if they had the relevant evidence so what could the SAR tell me that would be to my advantage?

LOL! You assume wrong!

Only last week I saw a so-called WS & evidence from a PPC that had no WS at all and when you hovered over the 'document' of drivel photos (that they had also submitted to court) said:

'bundle as much as you can and action if we don't have everything'!

Yes that is what the document was called...

That is how they do these cases. On a wing and a prayer, knowing that the British Public are generally so stupid or lily-livered that they will pay a stupid 3 figure sum to make it go away.

TBH you can partly blame the utter numptiness of people for the rise in this scam.

borgon_baxter

Ok. AoS completed yesterday, SAR request will be posted tomorrow (recorded delivery) and letter to BW legal informing them I have requested SAR also to be posted tomorrow. Lets see what they come back with.

Onto researching my defence now!

Thanks to everyone with help so far.

KeithP

Never ever use any form of post that requires a signature when writing to a parking company.

All that does is allow them to refuse delivery.
Proof of non-delivery is not quite what you want.

Use standard 1st Class Post and get a free Certificate of Posting from the Post Office counter.

The item is deemed delivered two working days later.

borgon_baxter

Hi,

Just an update and a few further questions..

After sending an SAR to premier parking via post (asking for the usual detailed list for them to supply the data about me that I am entitled to under data protection law relating to myself) I received a letter back yesterday basically saying that that... "it may not be able to search for all the data we hold on you without the following information.....PCN reference number & Vehicle Registration Mark..."

(I also included the vehicle reg and client reference number from BW legal in my letter to them.)

It then went on to say that they need me to provide proof of identity (Driving licence, Passport, Council Tax/Utility bill etc) and if the SAR relates to a PCN they need the ownership details from the V5 logbook.

They can then send the SAR within 30 days of receiving the above.


I also received a response from BW legal after sending them a letter informing them of my SAR to Premier Parking and also my request of a restriction of data processing from them. As expected based on the information in the NEWBIES thread, they have refused. They reason they state is " the right to restrict processing only applies in limited circumstances...." and its not applicable in my case.

My questions are as follows...
Q1. I no longer have the car or any paperwork. If I just send Premier Parking a utility bill are they legally obliged to provide for all the information I have requested?

Q2. My defense is due to be submitted by 14th October so even PP do send the SAR I am unlikely to get it before then to able to use to construct my defense. The only specific defense point I have is abuse of process as they have added on a spurious £60 charge which I understand in other cases has proved favorable for the defence? For additional defence points, is the best strategy to throw everything in there....
-Sparseness of detail so unclear on what legal basis the defense is brought
-Lack of signage
-Proof the claimant has sufficient proprietary interest in the land or has the necessary authorisation from landowner to issue PCN
..and put the onus on Premier Parking / BW Legal to prove that these points are wrong?

Q3. Is it worth at this point replying to BW Legal informing them that I am not willing to pay and will therefore see them in court where I will be refuting the claim on the basis of abuse on process due to the additional £60 charge and I will be seeking my costs. Is there a chance that they will back down based on this?

Thanks again for all help received.

borgon_baxter

Hi,

Can anyone help with my questions above?.....

Q1. I no longer have the car or any paperwork. If I just send Premier Parking a utility bill are they legally obliged to provide for all the information I have requested?

Q2. My defense is due to be submitted by 14th October so even PP do send the SAR I am unlikely to get it before then to able to use to construct my defense. The only specific defense point I have is abuse of process as they have added on a spurious £60 charge which I understand in other cases has proved favorable for the defence? For additional defence points, is the best strategy to throw everything in there....
-Sparseness of detail so unclear on what legal basis the defense is brought
-Lack of signage
-Proof the claimant has sufficient proprietary interest in the land or has the necessary authorisation from landowner to issue PCN
..and put the onus on Premier Parking / BW Legal to prove that these points are wrong?

Q3. Is it worth at this point replying to BW Legal informing them that I am not willing to pay and will therefore see them in court where I will be refuting the claim on the basis of abuse on process due to the additional £60 charge and I will be seeking my costs. Is there a chance that they will back down based on this?

Thanks

borgon_baxter

Just a polite bump as I can see the board is very busy .... any help to my questions would be appreciated.

Thanks

Coupon-mad

Firstly, there is no S in defence. Change your PC settings away from US.

And there is no such company as Premier Parking.

WHY do people keep doing this every time, and we have to waste time picking up sooo many newbies on this company name?

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/76316330#Comment_76316330

Engage your eye for detail when dealing with a court claim!

Q1. I no longer have the car or any paperwork. If I just send Premier Parking a utility bill are they legally obliged to provide for all the information I have requested?

Yes, but they still might unreasonably refuse...so threaten a complaint to the ICO like in lots of threads, e.g.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/76337301#Comment_76337301

Q2. My defense is due to be submitted by 14th October so even PP do send the SAR I am unlikely to get it before then to able to use to construct my defense. The only specific defense point I have is abuse of process as they have added on a spurious £60 charge which I understand in other cases has proved favorable for the defence? For additional defence points, is the best strategy to throw everything in there....
-Sparseness of detail so unclear on what legal basis the defense is brought
-Lack of signage
-Proof the claimant has sufficient proprietary interest in the land or has the necessary authorisation from landowner to issue PCN
..and put the onus on Premier Parking / BW Legal to prove that these points are wrong?

Obviously all of it.

You need actual defence points against the allegations and 'contract' they say was formed & accepted by conduct of parking. How do people not realise that the abuse of process point is just damage limitation re costs and NOT a defence point at all?

If you went for that alone, you won't have defended the actual PCN at all!

Q3. Is it worth at this point replying to BW Legal informing them that I am not willing to pay and will therefore see them in court where I will be refuting the claim on the basis of abuse on process due to the additional £60 charge and I will be seeking my costs. Is there a chance that they will back down based on this?

No chance! Pointless, and if it was worth doing the NEWBIES thread would say!

borgon_baxter

Thanks Coupon-Mad for the advice.

Defence needs to be filed by 14th October. I cant see any detail on either the claim form or letters from BW legal explaining specifically what the charge is for. In the PoC it just says its in respect of a PCN issued on 8/11/14 at the car park address (ANPR).

I believe from memory (it's also possible I received previous correspondence relating to this that I have ignored and not kept) it relates to an instance where the machine was not working and the driver continued to park so I have trawled through many defences and tried to pull something together that includes "frustration of contract" and "abuse of process" amongst other defence points.

I would appreciate any advice on this first draft.

Just a quick summary of background though to save going back through the thread...
1) received claim form through the post for £270.28 made up of £100 PCN charge, £38.28 interest, £60 "contractual cost pursuant to PCN terms and conditions", £25 court fee and £50 legal representatives costs.
2) PCN issue date 8/1/14 for a vehicle I no longer own
3) completed AoS on 15/9 and given to 14/10 to file Defense.
4) requested SAR from Premier Park Limited on 15/9
5) Premier Park Limited wrote back requesting proof of ID and ownership detail
6) Sent proof of ID via email - nothing back thus far and unlikely to receive the SAR before defence needs to be submitted (if at all)

Defence 1st draft....

IN THE COUNTY COURT CLAIM NO. XXXXXX

BETWEEN:


Premier Park Limited Claimant
and
XXXXXXX XXXXXXX Defendant

__________
DEFENCE
__________

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

2. The Defendant was the registered keeper and a named driver of vehicle registration number xxxxxxx on the material date

3. The Claimant has failed to provide the Defendant prior to the claim, with essential information including details of what the alleged breach was, any photographs taken, what it time occurred and for how long, and proof that a breach actually occurred. This amounts to a failure to comply with Practice Direction 6 (a). This claim is being made over 3 years after the alleged breach took place, and after all this time without adherence to Practice Direction 6. The expectations of the court outlined in Practice Direction 3 have not been met.

4. The Particulars of Claim (PoC) do not specify what are the terms breached by the driver of the vehicle. As such, the Claim fails to meet the requirements of Practice Direction 16 7.5 as there is nothing which specifies what the terms were and how they were breached.


5. The Claimant is put to strict proof that it has sufficient prorpietary 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.


6. 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 £100. This claim includes an additional £60, for which no calculation or explanation is given, and which appears to be an attempt at double recovery.
7. Overall the costs on the claim are disproportionate and are an abuse of process. 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. 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. 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.

9. 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. It is indisputable that the alleged 'parking charge' itself is a sum which the Supreme Court found is already inflated to more than comfortably cover the cost of all letters.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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:

The Judge stated:-
''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...''

14. 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 mendacious in terms of the added costs alleged.

15. 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.

16. 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, not least due to the abuse of process in attempting to claim fanciful costs which they are not entitled to recover.

I believe the facts contained in this Defence are true.

Name
Signature
Date

Le_Kirk

That bit of text between paragraphs 13 & 14 needs a number. There are some more cases struck out for Abuse of Process (particularly one at Caernarfon) search again for that thread by beamerguy with comment at post # 14 by Coupon-mad as it has been updated.

PPCs have 30 days to respond to SAR. They cannot (or are not supposed to) delay the process by asking for more than the V5C, if you supplied that with the original request. Information from the SAR will probably be more useful at Witness Statement stage.

Redx

Also include the same abuse of process by Judge Giddins , plus that Jones one in Canarfon , in addition to Taylor and Grand

The SAR should behave been emailed with a copy of the claim form and a redacted copy of a utility bill