Court Report - Brentford (Telephone Hearing) - Dismissed in 7 Minutes

bargepole

Claim Nos. F7GF5Z8W + F8GF7Y6Y – UK Car Park Management -v- Dr A, before Deputy District Judge Tear.

 No appearance for Claimant.

 The two consolidated claims related to a Gym, which the D’s husband was a member of, and which required users to input their VRM into a terminal to get 3 hours’ free parking. She was the hirer of the car under a lease, and on all occasions her husband had been the driver. He said that he did input the number, but may have mis-keyed an O for a 0, or similar.

 When the claims arrived, before I got involved, her husband took it upon himself to write the Defences, and appears to have used an ancient pre-Beavis template which was entirely irrelevant, and in which it stated that the Defendant was the registered keeper and driver. She was neither.

 I corrected this in the WS, and did the best I could to effectively rewrite the Defence, in the way it should have been in the first place. Fortunately, the C’s WS, purportedly written by ‘Jack Chapman’, was equally a car crash, containing the usual irrelevant templated paragraphs, and in several places referring to the female D as ‘he’, ‘him’ and ‘his’.

The main Defence arguments were:

• Claimant’s WS of dubious provenance, clearly not written by the witness
• Evidence exhibited which showed that D’s husband was using the Gym at all material times
• Landowner authority unsigned
• C unable to rely on POFA due to lack of authority to issue charges
• £60 add-ons are double recovery / abuse of process

The DDJ said that he had read all the papers, and as there was no representative of the Claimant present, invited me to summarise the case for the Defence.

He then cut to the chase, which was that the unsigned landowner authority document did not grant UKCPM authority to manage the car park. He had heard another case earlier this morning, and on previous occasions, in which that document had been exhibited, and the Claimant had been warned that their claims would not succeed if they relied upon it. 

The claims were therefore dismissed, and a half days’ loss of earnings, £47.50, awarded to the D.

I said that my lay rep fee should also be awarded, as the C had behaved unreasonably by continuing to pursue claims based on defective evidence, but he was not having any of that.

Coupon-mad

Brilliant - and very quick - result! 

Snakes_Belly

Brilliant result.

This issue seems to happen frequently at gyms. There is a current case regarding a gym located in the South East. Same scenario, issues with the terminal. 

Umkomaas

Thank you for the posting @bargepole; a successful court report adds a brightness to what can be interminably repetitious days here.  Momentarily releases the hamster from the wheel!  👍

Le_Kirk

Thanks Bargepole, nice to read of successes.

D_P_Dance

They have wasted your time, now waste some of theirs


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

beamerguy

D_P_Dance said:

They have wasted your time, now waste some of theirs


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

I rather think on this case, your advice should go to UKCPM

I assume it was the totally incompetent Gladstones who failed their client yet again ?

Umkomaas

D_P_Dance said:

They have wasted your time, now waste some of theirs


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

DPD - I'm sure @bargepole will be hanging on to every bit of your sage advice to him. 

🧑🏻‍🦳slurp 🥚