DCB Legal letter before Claim, Driver named

Umkomaas

skitahoewhite said:

Umkomaas said:

If the claim has been issued in your wife's name it is now live and she must deal with it (obviously you can do the work, but all under her name and signature). The time for arguing who the driver was has to become temporarily subordinate to the timeline available for dealing with the claim itself. It can be added initially to the defence and subsequently to the Witness Statement. 

This is unlikely to hit a court hearing until the latter part of this year, but you (or rather your wife) must hit every required deadline in between, otherwise she loses and she pays First Parking their pound of flesh. 

Forum regular @K@KeithP will helpfully provide you with your target dates if you can provide the forum with the Date of Issue shown on the N1 court claim form. 

That's ridiculous.They prematurely filed that claim. Is there anyway for the claim to be cancelled? 

Do you mean my advice?

nosferatu1001

Only the claimant can discontinue.
Their choice. Not yours for obvious reasons. 
OK so:
- on 11th Feb they knew the name and address of the driver. At that point they can no longer chase a keeper. 
- their 14 day deadline isnt relevant - there is no requirement in POFA for a driver to confirm any damned thing. 
- however they gave 14 days and you as driver was allowed to rely on that. They issued the claim too early, and against the wrong party, and so the Keeper could give them an out - a simple drop hands (once claim ack. according to the timescale, ie NOT BEFORE 5 days from date of issue!) for the current claim, and the keepr defendant will not COUNTERclaim for misuse of data - breach of GDPR., Once the Driver was told to them they lost any cause they HAD to process keeper data. £900 is the going rate here - search for "nosy" thread on this topic where they did file a counterclaim! I would say that there is a grey area where tey could have argued they wanted to confirm the drivers id, but they broke that by filing too early. 

DEFENCE HAS A C! UK spelling. Important. Pedantic yes, but for a reason

nosferatu1001

Para 3 - that is a brief summary of events
Type of car park, nature of alleged breach,e tc. You MUST - must  - look at other filed defences so you know what to do. We get really tired answering the same questions all the time, and having to correct obvious errors like saying I, me or using 3.1, 3..2 when the entire defence only uses 1,2,3,4 etc. 

Fruitcake

skitahoewhite said:

nosferatu1001 said:

Did you send them
- drivers full name
- drivers serviceable address
?
When was the claim form issued? If it was a suitably clear time after you Emailed(?) the above TOTAL info, then DCBL are in trouble
They have knowingly issued a claim to someone who has no liability. This is because their deadline is irrelevant - what matters is that the above COMPLETE info is received before proceedings commence. Proceedings commence hwen they file a claim, not at any point before.
If you can confirm the above aassumptions are all true, then obviously the DEFENDANT - not you!  - has a complete defence in POFA, and that gets banged in as para 3. Front and centre. You ask the court to dismiss the claim on this basis alone, as there is no prospect of success for the claimant. I would put the dates in to show when you mailed the full info vs when the claim was issued, and state the relevant para in POFA

Yes, the above is correct. The driver was named by the keeper on February 11th via email. A confirmation letter was sent to the driver on the 26th of February, giving 14 days to respond. The email was sent at about 9.30 am on March 12th (exactly 14 days from letter receival). The County Court issue date was March 12th. So in fact they did not adhere to the 14 day period and as you say their deadline is irrelevant. 
Is the POFA the only point of defense put into the Paragraph 3? IS there anything else noted?

I suppose the scamlicitors could have counted the issue date of the letter as day 1, but that would have caused a clause of impossibility since it could not have arrived until the following Monday the 1st of March which is when the 14 days should have started from, if such a legal requirement existed. It does not, but even if it did, the scamlicitors received confirmation from the driver on day 12, well inside their 14 day made up deadline.

The keeper should be writing a snotogram to the scammers and scamlicitors pointing this out, as well as including it in the keeper's defence.

If they pursue their claim against the keeper, then costs for unreasonable behaviour should be added plus ordinary costs, and or a counterclaim.

I would also think a strike out order to the court is, well, in order since the wrong person is being pursued.

skitahoewhite

Umkomaas said:

skitahoewhite said:

Umkomaas said:

If the claim has been issued in your wife's name it is now live and she must deal with it (obviously you can do the work, but all under her name and signature). The time for arguing who the driver was has to become temporarily subordinate to the timeline available for dealing with the claim itself. It can be added initially to the defence and subsequently to the Witness Statement. 

This is unlikely to hit a court hearing until the latter part of this year, but you (or rather your wife) must hit every required deadline in between, otherwise she loses and she pays First Parking their pound of flesh. 

Forum regular @K@KeithP will helpfully provide you with your target dates if you can provide the forum with the Date of Issue shown on the N1 court claim form. 

That's ridiculous.They prematurely filed that claim. Is there anyway for the claim to be cancelled? 

Do you mean my advice?

No, apologies. I was referring to the circumstances of having to go through the process of the counter claim. I appreciated your feedback. Sorry if that was not clear

nosferatu1001

Thinbk of it as a free £900

KeithP

skitahoewhite said:

The County Court issue date was March 12th.

With a Claim Issue Date of 12th March, you have until Wednesday 31st March to file an Acknowledgment of Service. If possible, do not file an AoS before 18th March, but otherwise, there is nothing to be gained by delaying it. 

To file an AoS, follow the guidance in the Dropbox file linked from the second post in the NEWBIES thread.

Having filed an AoS in a timely manner, you have until 4pm on Wednesday 14th April 2021 to file your Defence.

That's over four weeks away. Plenty of time to produce a Defence, but please don't leave it to the last minute.

To create a Defence, and then file a Defence by email, look again at the second post on the NEWBIES thread - immediately following where you found the Acknowledgment of Service instructions.

Don't miss the deadline for filing an Acknowledgment of Service, nor that for filing a Defence.

Coupon-mad

Only if you get it, they are hard to argue.  But there are examples in the threads by @ellaro9 and @Nosy (the latter has 2 threads but one involves a counterclaim for similar reasons to this case).  

Had the keeper already named the driver and you were merely emailing to confirm that you were?  If so, the Claimant knew well before filing the claim that the registered keeper could not be the liable party.  

In #3, (and #4 I'd suggest) the keeper neds to explain the timeline and what was told to this Claimant and when, and then a separate paragraph explaining why that matters and that SCS Law have a published legal opinion in ParkingNews, the official BPA Newsletter, confirming that naming the driver is not a 28 day ring-fenced right.  It exists until the very point of filing the claim  and this Claimant knew by then, who the driver was, and should never have pursued the keeper in court.

skitahoewhite

nosferatu1001 said:

Only the claimant can discontinue.
Their choice. Not yours for obvious reasons. 
OK so:
- on 11th Feb they knew the name and address of the driver. At that point they can no longer chase a keeper. 
- their 14 day deadline isnt relevant - there is no requirement in POFA for a driver to confirm any damned thing. 
- however they gave 14 days and you as driver was allowed to rely on that. They issued the claim too early, and against the wrong party, and so the Keeper could give them an out - a simple drop hands (once claim ack. according to the timescale, ie NOT BEFORE 5 days from date of issue!) for the current claim, and the keepr defendant will not COUNTERclaim for misuse of data - breach of GDPR., Once the Driver was told to them they lost any cause they HAD to process keeper data. £900 is the going rate here - search for "nosy" thread on this topic where they did file a counterclaim! I would say that there is a grey area where tey could have argued they wanted to confirm the drivers id, but they broke that by filing too early. 

DEFENCE HAS A C! UK spelling. Important. Pedantic yes, but for a reason

All of this is really helpful. Something I am unclear on is the counterclaim £900. Where did that number come from? The other point made is the "drop of hands" comment. Is this a statement with in the claim acknowledgement? 

skitahoewhite

Coupon-mad said:

Only if you get it, they are hard to argue.  But there are examples in the threads by @ellaro9 and @Nosy (the latter has 2 threads but one involves a counterclaim for similar reasons to this case).  

Had the keeper already named the driver and you were merely emailing to confirm that you were?  If so, the Claimant knew well before filing the claim that the registered keeper could not be the liable party.  

In #3, (and #4 I'd suggest) the keeper neds to explain the timeline and what was told to this Claimant and when, and then a separate paragraph explaining why that matters and that SCS Law have a published legal opinion in ParkingNews, the official BPA Newsletter, confirming that naming the driver is not a 28 day ring-fenced right.  It exists until the very point of filing the claim  and this Claimant knew by then, who the driver was, and should never have pursued the keeper in court.

Yes, the claimant knew who the driver was on Feb. 11th and the email sent on March 12th was confirmation. 
With regards to the two threads mentioned, and the defence template, the case examples given I am finding difficult to apply the correct ones. Is it a matter of looking for the ones as examples per defence paragraph?