County court claim UKPC

Y333moe

this is an updated copy of my defence, do you think its too long?

IN THE COUNTY COURT

CLAIM No: xxxxxxxxxx

BETWEEN:

UK CAR PARK MANAGEMENT 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 marked bay allocated to Company XXXX at Business Park in a visitor bay. Not on any yellow lines nor causing an obstruction.

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 does 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. In addition to the 'parking charge', the Claimant has artificially inflated the value of the Claim by adding costs of £60 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.

5.1 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 not with reference to the judgement in parking eye 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.
5.2 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 any party affected by this order has a right to apply to set it aside vary or stay it by application made not more than 7 days after this order was served upon the party.

6. 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.
6.1 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.
6.2 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.
6.3 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.
6.4The 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.
6.5 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:

http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2015/67.html

6.6 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.

6.7 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.

6.8 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.

6.9 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...''

6.10 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.''

7. 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.

8. 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.

9.1 At the time of the material events the signage was deficient in number, distribution, wording and lighting to reasonably convey a contractual obligation.
9.2 The signage contained particularly onerous terms not sufficiently drawn to the attention of the visitor as set out in the leading judgment of Denning MR in J Spurling v Bradshaw 1956EWCA Civ 3
9.3 The Defendant avers that the residential site that is the subject of these proceedings is not a site where there is a commercial value to be protected. The Claimant has not suffered
loss or pecuniary disadvantage. The penalty charge is, accordingly, unconscionable in this context. It is denied that the Claimant has standing to bring any claim in the absence of a
contract that expressly permits the Claimant to do so, in addition to merely undertaking parking management. The Claimant has provided no proof of any such entitlement.

10. Even if the Court is minded to consider that the car did pass that sign, the terms of the sparse signage make no offer available; there is no licence to park.

11. The Claimant is put to strict proof that it has sufficient interest in the land or that there are specific terms in its contract to bring an action on its own behalf. As a third party agent, the Claimant may not pursue any charge, unless specifically authorised by the principal. The Defendant has the reasonable belief that the Claimant does not have the authority to issue charges on this land in their own name, and that they have no right to bring any action regarding this claim.


12. At best, parking without authorisation could be a matter for the landowner to pursue, in the event that damages were caused by a trespass. A parking charge cannot be dressed up by a non-landowner parking firm, as a fee, or a sum in damages owed to that firm for positively inviting and allowing a car to trespass. Not only is this nonsense, but the Supreme Court decision in ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis [2015] UKSC 67, confirmed that ParkingEye could not have pursued a sum in damages or for trespass.

13.1. The Claimant has sent threatening and misleading demands which stated that
further debt recovery action would be taken to recover what is owed by passing the
debt to a ‘local’ recovery agent (which suggested to the Defendant they would be
calling round like bailiffs) adding further unexplained charges of £25 to the
£100 with no evidence of how this extra charge has been calculated.
No figure for additional charges was 'agreed' nor could it have formed part of the
alleged 'contract' because no such indemnity costs were quantified on the signs.
Terms cannot be bolted on later with figures plucked out of thin air, as if they were
incorporated into the small print when they were not.
13.2. The Defendant also disputes that the Claimant has incurred £50 solicitor costs.
13.3. The Defendant has the reasonable belief that the Claimant has not incurred £50 costs
to pursue an alleged £100 debt.
13.4. Notwithstanding the Defendant's belief, the costs are in any case not recoverable.
13.5. The Claimant described the charge of £50.00 "legal fees" not "contractual costs".
CPR 27.14 does not permit these to be recovered in the Small Claims Court.

14. In summary, the Claimant's particulars disclose no legal basis for the sum claimed, and the Court is invited to dismiss the claim in its entirety.

Statement of Truth:

I believe that the facts stated in this Defence are true.

Name
Signature
Date

Redx

Every paragraph should be numbered , currently it's not

The abuse of process paragraphs should be above the statement of truth

Le_Kirk

Remove the hyperlink (just put the title of the case to which it refers) judges/courts will not chase links.

Y333moe

Thank you for your feedback. Anything else I need to add? Or make changes too? Where would I put that I wont be able to attend a hearing for at least 2 months?

KeithP

Y333moe wrote: »

Where would I put that I wont be able to attend a hearing for at least 2 months?

That comes later - at Directions Questionnaire time.

I.e. after the Claimant has seen your Defence and decides to continue.

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

1505grandad

Paras in 5 are contained in para 6

Y333moe

I'm going to take out para 5 as para 6 is more detailed

Redx

Y333moe wrote: »

Thank you for your feedback. Anything else I need to add? Or make changes too? Where would I put that I wont be able to attend a hearing for at least 2 months?

Questions like that prove that you hadn't digested the newbies faq sticky thread post 2 enough , especially the posts by bargepole posted years ago

Please , please , no more questions about basics , check there before posting

Y333moe

i will be printing my amended defence and send it off today is there anything else that i need to add?

Redx

When you say "sending off" you worry me greatly

It should be printed , signed , scanned back in , saved as a pdf , and e-mailed as a PDF attachment to the CCBC , not sent off (sending off implies snail mail)

Alternatively sign a piece of paper or the form , scan it or take a picture, attach it to your pdf as an e signature

Your post should say

And emailed today

, for clarity