VCS County Court Claim HELP

tcsheffield

Thank you for all your comments.

Not much else I can do.

It does appear strange when reliance on previous successful judgments to form a defence are dismissed?

Coupon-mad

You won't have grounds to complain about a case not going your way, if the Judge had evidence and found for the Claimant.  VCS will have trumped Excel v Wilkinson with VCS v Percy, which has been discussed on this forum.

This won't help you now but might help newbies.  In a parking case, as in most civil claim cases, the Defendant is best being seen, even if virtually.  Advice here is always to turn up and NEVER accept a hearing on the papers.

Not only would a hearing have given you a chance to show the Judge that you are an honest witness, which gains people a huge advantage that the written word never can, but you could have exposed any chinks in their evidence.  Leave it to the papers and they would be bound to win because they make most cases sound plausible.

As soon as you decided to avoid a hearing, you'd almost certainly lost from that point.  We would have told you that if you'd asked us when the court suggested a hearing 'on the papers'.  We'd have shouted from the rooftops "noooooooo!".

The NEWBIES thread link to bargepole's thread about the court process says this and this has always been this forum's advice.

So sorry you lost after starting out on track. 

Redx

tcsheffield said:

Thank you for all your comments.

Not much else I can do.

It does appear strange when reliance on previous successful judgments to form a defence are dismissed?

There is no doubt in my mind that they will have used VCS versus Percy to trump those other cases in regards to the additional charges !  Bargepole posted about the case not long ago , the consensus being that the 2022 government CoP will trump everything else except previous laws like POFA and the CRA , from next summer onwards !

If you are not present , you don't get the chance to question or rebut the other parties , so acceptance of a hearing on papers is definitely not recommended on here in 99% of cases , yours being an example of why not !

We can all be clever with hindsight , but not one person on here would agree with a hearing on papers !

The outcome may have been the same , but the judgment may have been less in total had you please your case orally , on the day ( or you may have successfully pleaded your case orally , and won with nothing to pay ! )

So a bad mistake on your part , compounded by not reading about the Percy case , which we already have done