BW Legal - Premier Park - Thanks for All Your Help!

Jon8838

Morning All,

This is my first post, though I'm through the other end of the process now and I wanted to thank everyone for their help (even though they might have not known they were giving it to me). I've been using previous posts and examples to put together my defence which has paid off, so now I wanted to thank everyone and share my case so that it might help others.

In 2015, I drove into a Student Accommodation compound where I dropped off my girlfriend who was a tenant there. I had done this many times before with no consequence. It is a gated compound but the gate is often open. I drove back out and thought nothing of it. I received a PCN a few days later saying I had been caught by ANPR and they provided images of me driving into the compound.

This is where I first came across this forum and searched for what I should do next. I sent the below appeal letter:

[Removed at Coupon-mad's Request Below]

I received nothing from them and to be quite honest, life got in the way and I forgot about it. I wasn't in the greatest place from a mental health perspective and there were vastly more important things on my mind.

Fast Forward 4 years to 2019 and I receive a letter from BW Legal informing me that they are now taking over my account. They go through the usual threatening letters to me demanding that I pay. This time, I have had dealings with the Small Claims Process and after reading information from here, I was more than happy to go through the process.
To cut a long story short, I ignored their letters (probably a bit too much) not believing that they'd really go through the claim process for such a weak case.
However, when the claim forms started coming through, I stopped ignoring them and decided to defend the claim.

I again used the information that many people have posted here before and put together my defence, some of you might recognise parts of it:

DEFENCE



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



2. The facts are the Defendant was the registered keeper of the vehicle in question at the time of the alleged contravention. The Claim relates to an alleged debt in damages arising from a driver's alleged breach of contract, at [LOCATION] car park on [DATE].



3. The vehicle entered the property at the invitation of a tenant of the property, [PARTNER], who was an occupant of the vehicle for the purpose of transporting Miss [PARTNER] to the property. At the time of entry, there was no barrier to entry with the property’s gate being open and unobstructed.



4. Any breach is denied, and it is further denied that there was any agreement to pay the Claimant's £100 'Parking Charge Notice ('PCN')'. 



5. The allegation appears to be based on ANPR images showing the vehicle in question entering the [LOCATION] car park but is not proof of the vehicle being parked within the car park. These ANPR images were also taken without any visible notices to the public that the images were being gathered, or for what purpose.



6. At the material time, the Claimant operated strictly subject to the October 2014 British Parking Association ('BPA') CoP, which states:



“21.1 You may use ANPR camera technology to manage, control and enforce parking in private car parks, as long as you do this in a reasonable, consistent and transparent manner. Your signs at the car park must tell drivers that you are using this technology and what you will use the data captured by ANPR cameras for.”



7. The Defendant avers that the lack of any signage prior to entry to the car park setting out terms in a clear manner makes it impossible for any binding contract to be formed.



8. The Defendant asserts that there was no breach of terms and conditions displayed through signage as the vehicle vacated the property within the allowed 15 minutes loading and unloading time.



9. Accordingly, it is denied that the Defendant breached any of the Claimant's purported contractual terms, whether express, implied, or by conduct.



10. 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. In addition to the original PCN penalty, for which liability is denied, the Claimants have artificially inflated the value of the Claim by adding purported added 'costs' of £60, which the Defendant submits have not actually been incurred by the Claimant. 

10.1. These have been variously described as a 'BW Legal instructions fee' (in the pre-action exchange of letters) and/or a 'debt collection charge' (not part of any terms on signage and cannot be added, not least because it was never expended). Suddenly in the Particulars there is also a second add-on for purported 'legal representative costs of £50' on top of the vague £60, artificially hiking the sum to £265.42. This would be more than double recovery, being vague and disingenuous and the Defendant is alarmed by this gross abuse of process.

10.2. Not only are such costs not permitted (CPR 27.14) but the Defendant believes that the Claimant has not incurred legal costs. Given the fact that BW Legal boasted in Bagri v BW Legal Ltd of processing 'millions' of claims with an admin team (and only a handful of solicitors), the Defendant avers that no solicitor is likely to have supervised this current batch of cut & paste PPS robo-claims at all, on the balance of probabilities.

10.2.1. According to Ladak v DRC Locums UKEAT/0488/13/LA the claimant can only recover the direct and provable costs of the time spent on preparing the claim in a legal capacity, not any administration cost. 



11. In summary, it is the Defendant's position that the claim 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.

I believe the facts contained in this Defence are true. 

Jumping ahead, the case proceeded, it was assigned to my chosen County Court: Warwick. Yesterday however, I received a General Form of Judgement or Order which magically read:

IT IS ORDERED THAT

The claim is struck out as an abuse of process.

The reasoning that the District Judge gave was that there was a substantial charge additional to the parking charge that is not recoverable under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 Schedule 4.
The Judge also referenced Parking Eye vs Beavis as not relevant. They also considered S71(2) of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 for the fairness of the contract terms and determined that the provision of the additional charge breached examples 6,10 and 14. The Judge therefore determined that it is an abuse of process for the Claimant to issue a knowingly inflated claim for an additional sum which it is not entitled to recover.

As you can imagine, I'm ecstatic! I wanted to thank everyone here as a lot of you have put in a lot of time to help people, more than you may know, and I'm one of them. I also wanted to share this information in the hope that'll help more in the future.

Apologies for some lack of details, I haven't looked into detail as to how much I'm allowed to publish.

Thanks again everyone!

beamerguy

Well done you :beer:

BWLegal Spanked again for ABUSE OF PROCESS

So, Warwick court, who was the judge and case number please

I would like to add your case to the ABUSE OF PROCESS thread to help others and I am sure coupon-mad will add this in her Post #14 within the thread
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6014081/abuse-of-process-district-judge-tells-bwlegal

What on earth are the SRA doing about BWLegal who keep abusing the courts with fabrications ??
https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems.page

Redx

Well done from me too

It's good to see that judges are cottoning on to the abuse of process charges and striking out fraudulent claims early

It's also Great to see somebody using the forum advice to such Great effect instead of expecting the work to be done for them , you have made my day much better having read it

Another one bites the dust !!

Now put a complaint in to the SRA

Umkomaas

The 'Abuse of Process' word is spreading among the judiciary - Southampton-Caernarfon-Warwick.

Well done Jon8838 in getting to grips with this without any direct forum involvement - a brilliant example as to how straightforward this can be with proper use of the forum NEWBIES sticky advice. In sharp contrast to some cases that are approaching 200 posts and hardly past base 1.

Super read, thank you.

Jon8838

Thanks again everyone.

If it's ok, I'll post the claim number after the period where applications can still be made passes? It may be me being paranoid, but with the amount of time this has taken, I wouldn't want to screw it up.
The judge was Deputy District Judge Josephs

beamerguy

Jon8838 wrote: »

Thanks again everyone.

If it's ok, I'll post the claim number after the period where applications can still be made passes? It may be me being paranoid, but with the amount of time this has taken, I wouldn't want to screw it up.
The judge was Deputy District Judge Josephs

OK, this thread has now been linked to the ABUSE OF PROCESS thread
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6014081/abuse-of-process-district-judge-tells-bwlegal

As you know, BWLegal appealed the Southampton strike out for ABUSE OF PROCESS. They lost that appeal.
They are having another appeal pop in the same court for another case which was struck out.
So possible that they appeal your case.
All depends if they get turned on by a spanking ?

Coupon-mad

Deputy District Judge Josephs

Warwick County Court

IT IS ORDERED THAT

The claim is struck out as an abuse of process.

The reasoning that the District Judge gave was that there was a substantial charge additional to the parking charge that is not recoverable under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 Schedule 4.
The Judge also referenced Parking Eye vs Beavis as not relevant.

They also considered S71(2) of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 for the fairness of the contract terms and determined that the provision of the additional charge breached examples 6,10 and 14. The Judge therefore determined that it is an abuse of process for the Claimant to issue a knowingly inflated claim for an additional sum which it is not entitled to recover.

OMG I am so happy! A slap in the face for Premier Park's ''legal team'' hahaha!

I can only think the Southampton area Judges have been talking to the Warwick area, or that DJ Grand is best buddies with DDJ Joseph!

This is the first time a Judge has cited paras 6, 10 and 14 of Sch2 of the CRA 2015 to strike out a PCN.

So pleased. Even if we gradually get Judges to see this, it is working!

I read the CRA the weekend before CEC16's Monday 11th Nov case hearing and scribbled those 3 paragraphs from the CRA down in a notebook on the station platform in Sussex when waiting for the train at 6.45am that morning. Almost literally, back of a fag packet job, only I don't smoke!

Once you can give us your claim number and date of hearing* here (next month?) I will add it to post #14 wording from the Abuse of Process thread so that we can start to build a list of such strike-outs country-wide (hopefully).

* can you give us a link to a scan of the actual Judgment or Order so people can use it as evidence please? It means more than just words in a WS.

:T

They are having another appeal pop in the same court for another case which was struck out.

The other Soton case was adjourned while they think about whether to appeal CEC16's case, and they don't have long now.

So possible that they appeal your case.

If they do - well it would be a N244 application to set aside that Order, not an appeal as such - then I am sure this OP knows what to say, in order to push against the open door that is DDJ Joseph who seems to be completely on board.

beamerguy

Let us hope the courts are spreading the word. They must be sick to death with the constant flow of trivial scams

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 together with Abuse of Process simply means that the legals who ply their scam in the courts, will never know what day, what week, a court anywhere in E&W will strike out their fake claim.

The £60 scam was never thought out by these legals and now they are paying the price

The_Deep

Well done OP but this need not be the end of the matter. As they have wasted your time. you can now waste some of theirs.

You may like to consider claiming against them for the time you have spent on this. CPR allows up to £19 an hour for your time. Add on stationery, travel if any. Send the PPC a letter before action, it costs nothing and you have up to six years to follow it up.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/legal-system/taking-legal-action/small-claims/making-a-small-claim/

You might also consider making a formal complaint about the solicitors to their regulatory body the SRA,

https://www.sra.org.uk/

They are very well aware that such practices are ultra vires and in continuing add these charges are surely bringing the profession into disrepute.

Coupon-mad

To the OP, could you edit your first post to remove your 'appeal letter' as that is the MSE article one and it needs a major overhaul and is argued wrongly.

We don't want newbies reading that appeal and copying it!

I've sent a pm to MSE Towers again to try to get the article and template appeal MSE suggests, put right, as it is legally wrong at the moment.

Jon8838

I've removed the offending letter. The judgement said that a period of 7 days is available for applications so I'll post a copy of the judgement publicly probably early next week. If anyone needs it beforehand please do PM me.

Still thinking about the counter claim. I haven't got many records on how much time/money I spent on everything. Will also consider the SRA complaint next week.

Thanks again for all your messages of support/thanks/congratulations, it's all just added to the great feeling!