Dcbl letter before claim stage

Le_Kirk

3. Please note the claimant has sent 3 letters of claim to myself, one of these had two pcns Parking Charge Notices (PCNs) which were duplicated. I noticed this and informed them and they amended it. If I had not informed them of their mistake they would of would have remained unaware.

Check your whole WS for similar instances of poor/incorrect grammar.  Also, the first time you use an acronym it should be written out in full with the acronym after it (apologies if you have done this elsewhere in the WS).

1505grandad

As above  -  but particularly:-

"4. The claimant has filed two separate court claims against me for the same subject. In my opinion this is a complete waste of everyone’s time, especially the court and they have shown a complete (lack) of incompetence and abuse of process."  -  presumably you did not mean to say (this)?

Also you do not appear to have used/adapted the two WS as per previous posts by C-m. 

Cp100

1505grandad said:

As above  -  but particularly:-

"4. The claimant has filed two separate court claims against me for the same subject. In my opinion this is a complete waste of everyone’s time, especially the court and they have shown a complete (lack) of incompetence and abuse of process."  -  presumably you did not mean to say (this)?

Also you do not appear to have used/adapted the two WS as per previous posts by C-m. 

Ok Thanks I will delete the last sentence about incompetence. Not sure what you mean by the two WS from C-m 

Le_Kirk

Cp100 said:

Also you do not appear to have used/adapted the two WS as per previous posts by C-m. 

Ok Thanks I will delete the last sentence about incompetence. Not sure what you mean by the two WS from C-m 

@Coupon-mad gave you two exemplars of witness statements to read and use for style and format: -

Best examples recently are by @wobs2k and the first WS by @ricky_balboa

Coupon-mad

Your WS looks like it's based on the old RobertCox one that shouldn't be used now.

Cp100

Le_Kirk said:

Cp100 said:

Also you do not appear to have used/adapted the two WS as per previous posts by C-m. 

Ok Thanks I will delete the last sentence about incompetence. Not sure what you mean by the two WS from C-m 

@Coupon-mad gave you two exemplars of witness statements to read and use for style and format: -

Best examples recently are by @wobs2k and the first WS by @ricky_balboa

1. I am the Defendant in this matter. I am unrepresented and have no experience with Court proceedings. I trust the court will excuse my inexperience if I have not set out the documents in the way that the Claimant has. I feel the need to highlight i suffer with depression which has been significantly raised throughout this process and I have just lost my mother throughout this process.

2. I make this witness statement in anticipation for the court hearing scheduled for ……. in my defence of the Claimants’ claim.

3. Please note the claimant has sent three letters of claim to myself, one of these had two parking charge notices (pcns) which were duplicated. I noticed this and informed the claimant and the claimant amended the mistake. If I had not informed the claimant of their mistake I feel they would have remained unaware. 

4. The claimant has filed two separate court claims against me for the same subject. In my opinion this is a complete waste of everyone’s time, especially the court.

5. The Claimant has issued a further claim, against the Defendant on the same date, and with substantially identical particulars, for the same cause of action. The issuing of two separate claims, by the same Claimant and for essentially the same cause of action, is an abuse of the civil litigation process. The long-established case law in Henderson -v- Henderson [1843] 67 ER 313  , establishes the principle that when a matter becomes the subject of litigation, the parties are required to advance their whole case.  In Arnold v National Westminster Bank plc [1991] 3 All ER 41 the court noted that cause of action estoppel “…applies where a cause of action in a second action is identical to a cause of action in the first, the latter having been between the same parties or their privies and having involved the same subject matter.”  The Court is invited to strike out the second claim due to cause of action estoppel - or in the alternative, consolidate the two claims to be determined together at one hearing - and to apply appropriate sanctions against the Claimants for filing two abusive and exaggerated claims.

6. The claimant has also requested I pay an extortionate amount compared to the original amount of the PCN. Not only this but the second letter of claim they sent was for one pcn, they then sent a further letter of claim for the same pcn plus another pcn. The letters combined with their emails didn’t make much sense and I felt like they were trying to force me to pay as much as possible.

7. The Quantum and abuse of process

This Claimant continues to pursue a hugely disproportionate sum; it is denied that the quantum sought is recoverable, indeed it represents a penalty. Attention is drawn to paras 98, 100, 193, 198 of ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis [2015] KSC67. Also ParkingEye Ltd v Somerfield Stores Ltd ChD [2011] EWHC 4023(QB) where the parking charge was £75, discounted to £37.50 for prompt payment. Whilst £75 was reasonable, HHJ Hegarty (sitting at the High Court; later ratified by the CoA) held in paras 419-428 that admin costs inflating it to £135 'would appear to be penal'.

8. In addition to this, the ‘additional charge’ constitutes a double recovery and the court is invited to find the quantum claimed is false and an abuse of process as found by HHJ Jackson in Excel v Wilkinson in which £60 had been added to a parking charge. 

(Ex 7)Claim number XXXXX XXXXX Hearing Date XXXXX2022

9. This is now underpinned by Government intervention and regulation. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities ('DLUHC') published in February 2022, a statutory Code of Practice, found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/private-parking-code-of-practice

10. Adding debt recovery costs, damages or fees (however described) onto a parking charge is now banned. In a very short section called 'Escalation of costs' the new statutory Code of Practice says: "The parking operator must not levy additional costs over and above the level of a parking charge or parking tariff as originally issued."

11. Whilst the new Code and Act is not retrospective, it was enacted due to the failure of the self-serving BPA & IPC Codes of Practice. The Minister is indisputably talking about existing (not future) cases when declaring that 'recovery' fees were 'designed to extort money'. A clear steer for the Courts.

12. The DLUHC consulted for over two years and considered evidence from a wide range of stakeholders. Almost a fifth of all respondents to the 2021 Technical Consultation called for false fees to be scrapped altogether; this despite the parking industry flooding both public consultations, some even masquerading as consumers. The DLUHC saw through this and in a published Response, they identified that some respondents were 'parking firms posing as motorists'. Genuine consumer replies pointed out that successful debt recovery does not trigger court proceedings and the debt recovery/robo-claim law firms operate on a 'no win, no fee' basis; essentially Trade Body Board member colleagues passing motorists' data around electronically to share inflated sums of money.

13. This Claimant has not incurred any additional costs (not even for reminder letters) because the parking charge more than covers what the Supreme Court in Beavis called an automated letter-chain business model that generates a healthy profit.

14. The driver did not agree to pay a parking charge, let alone unknown costs, which were not quantified in prominent text on signage. It comes too late when purported debt recovery fees are only quantified after the event.

15. The new Act overrides mistakes made in the appeal cases that the parking industry try to rely upon (Britannia v Semark-Jullien, One Parking Solution v Wilshaw, Vehicle Control Services v Ward and Vehicle Control Services v Percy). Far from being persuasive, regrettably these one-sided appeals were findings by Circuit Judges who appeared to be inexperienced in the nuances of private parking law and were led in one direction by Counsel for parking firms, and the litigant-in-person consumers lacked the wherewithal to appeal further.

16. Where this Claimant tries to rely upon those cases, the Defendant avers that significant errors were made. Evidence was either overlooked (including inconspicuous signage in Wilshaw, where the Judge was also oblivious to the BPA Code of Practice, including rules for surveillance cameras and the DVLA KADOE requirement for landowner authority) or the Judge inexplicably sought out and quoted from the wrong Code altogether (Percy). In Ward, a few seconds' emergency stop out of the control of the driver was unfairly aligned with the admitted contract in Beavis. The learned Judges were not in possession of the same level of facts and evidence as the DLUHC, whose Code now clarifies all such matters.

17. Aggressive Debt Collection

 The Code's Ministerial Foreword is unequivocal about abusive existing cases such as the present claim: "Private firms issue roughly 22,000 parking tickets every day, often adopting a labyrinthine system of misleading and confusing signage, opaque appeals services, aggressive debt collection and unreasonable fees designed to extort money from motorists."

18. This foreword seems particularly pertinent in the case of this Claimant’s debt collectors, whose tactics are particularly aggressive. Indeed, within their defence,paragraphs 31-33 describe my defence as ‘nonsensical and/or irrelevant’ and ‘unreasonable’; I believe this to be both unprofessional and unnecessarily derogatory (and have therefore referred them to their regulatory authority).

19. The assertion that I had not ‘spent much time at all’ on my defence is false. With the court process well outside of my life experience, my defence was signed only after extensive research on appropriate fora and was supported by knowledge that I had gained during study of the relevant case law. Not having the benefit of being in the Legal Profession, and indeed having the added pressure of being in the Medical Profession during the worst of the COVID-19 Pandemic, I have attempted to represent myself to the best of my ability.

20. That the Claimant’s solicitors should ‘smear’ my defence with such language in order to attempt to engage ‘unreasonable costs’, suggests exactly that aggressive nature to which the minister refers. I hope that the court can encourage firms such as the Claimant’s solicitors to act in a more becoming manner for the benefit of both consumers and the courts themselves.

21. I therefore request that the court find the quantum claimed is false and constitutes an abuse of process.

22. I believe that the facts stated in this witness statement are true. I understand that proceedings for contempt of court may be brought against anyone who makes, or causes to be made, a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth without an honest belief in its truth.

Please see updated WS  

Fruitcake

That looks nothing like the examples you were advised to use, and I can't see anything referring to the alleged event itself. How is the judge going to know what happened on the day, and understand why you are not liable for the charge?
Do you intend to include exhibits and evidence to support your case, because you haven't mentioned any?

Le_Kirk

If you click on somebody's tagged name it takes you to their profile, you then click on discussions and it takes you (in @wobs2k's case) to one such and it is here 5 May at 3:46PM <<<LIINK were you find the drop box link.

Cp100

Fruitcake said:

That looks nothing like the examples you were advised to use, and I can't see anything referring to the alleged event itself. How is the judge going to know what happened on the day, and understand why you are not liable for the charge?
Do you intend to include exhibits and evidence to support your case, because you haven't mentioned any?

How? I’ve literally got half of my information from that whiteness statement. 

I’m not sure what happened as already stated it was 5 years ago and I wasn’t the only one with access to the vehicle. It’s also multiple times at the same location. So I’m not sure where to go with that or how to explain/fight it. Which is why at the start I said maybe I should just pay it. 

I’m going to add this in also..

POFA and Consumer Rights Act

11. Pursuant to Schedule 4 paragraph 4(5) of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 

(POFA), the sum claimed exceeds the maximum sum which may be recovered from 

the keeper.

2. Pursuant to Schedule 2 paragraph 6 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, the sum 

claimed could be regarded as unfair by the court as it considers the test of fairness 

laid out in Section 71.

Cp100

Le_Kirk said:

If you click on somebody's tagged name it takes you to their profile, you then click on discussions and it takes you (in @wobs2k's case) to one such and it is here 5 May at 3:46PM <<<LIINK were you find the drop box link.

Thank you, but I’ve already managed to locate this and this is where I have taken most of my information from for mine. I’m not sure why it’s been said I’m not using it and mine is completely different. I’m obviously not going to copy it word for word but the parts I can use I have put into my WS.