County Court Claim Form received (UKPC / DCB Legal)

Johnersh

I suggest writing to C with a copy of the application you intend to file. Then they actually have the complaint that you'll present to court.

I'd do a witness statement setting out the defaults. 

If they do nothing, they can have no complaint when it is filed. 

Coupon-mad

Is it an N244 application to set aside judgment, not an appeal?  Confused because a Judge has made a decision and I wondered if that required an appeal.  

Gettingrippedoff

Coupon-mad said:

Thanks Johnersh, we are already on the right track then.  That is what the OP has already done, pretty much, last week.

No reply from DCBLegal.  I wonder if that email was received?  Might even be worth a phone call, demanding to speak to one of their solicitors and no-one else.  This is a rare case. Needs all out attack and an SRA complaint regardless.

Received an Auto Reply to the email which was sent with following:

“Please note that we will aim to respond to your correspondence where required as soon as possible. 

Should you be in receipt of a letter of claim, please visit www.dcblegal.co.uk/response where you will find further information and be able to reply to the form accordingly.”

Will be registering a SRA complaint in the next few days.

bargepole said:

I would suggest filing an N244 application, without notice, requesting that the Judgment be set aside, owing to the fact that the Claimant discontinued the claim, and therefore the Court should never have listed a hearing.

The application should also ask for the £108 fee for the application to be payable by the Claimant, who should not have proceeded with the hearing when they knew the claim was discontinued.

Will file this tomorrow. Just checking it out now believe it can be filed online.

Thanks guys, will keep you posted.

Gettingrippedoff

Johnersh said:

If it were me, I'd go all-in and inform the judge that the court was misled by their advocate, since C served a notice of discontinuance.

The firm knew that it was not entitled to the order sought and/or why D had not intended, but requested judgment anyway. They'd  need to explain to me how their advocate had instructions to seek an order for judgment when previously their client had instructed them to discontinue. 

The declaration on the discontinuance is that it has been filed at court and served on every party. So the service upon D should have occurred at the same time as or after filing.  There are serious professional conduct issues arising here.

C needs to request judgment is set aside and to enter judgment in Ds favour. 

I'd give them 7 days to do that, absent which I'd be making or an SRA regulatory complaint and an application to set aside whilst seeking costs for unreasonable behaviour.

But I can be aggressive like that. 

I completely agree with you. There is good ground to go all in with this not least because of serious professional conduct issues as you mentioned and that to in front of the Court!

Considering what has happened here and the huge distress this is causing me what would you see as reasonable compensation request in this case for their unreasonable behaviour?

Fruitcake

I would also add a separate claim of £250 for unnecessarily continuing to process your personal data in breach of the DPA 2015 and GDPR 2018.

Gettingrippedoff

Coupon-mad said:

Couple of hundred at least.  Or maybe the amount of judgment wrongfully obtained.

Are you going to try one more email?  Try forwarding your last one and adding a copy of what you intend to put in your application and SRA complaint (use Johnersh's words as he is a solicitor) and send it to a first name @dcblegal.co.uk (which is how their emails work).

Try

jamie

paul

yasmin

laura

Send them into a spin today, just before the long Bank Holiday weekend.  Give them till Wednesday 4pm to reply setting out how they will right this wrong and compensate you.

Thanks All. I have sent them a chase email this morning to the email I sent last week with a copy of N244 I intend to file if they do not respond by 4pm on Wednesday and also advising will register a SRA complaint. 

Also mentioned a separate claim of £250 for unnecessarily continuing to process my personal data as per @Fruitcake

Done a search on Google for some of the names you mentioned and sent to their first name @dcblegal.co.uk and also their first name plus initial of surname @dcblegal.co.uk (yasminm / jamiea / paulg@dcblegal.co.uk). Sending to the address with initial of surname included returned Delivery Failures advising blocked due to Recipient address rejected.

Received an auto reply again from info@dcblegal.co.uk, same as last week. jamie@dcblegal.co.uk returned Out of Office message advising away until 13th April. laura@dcblegal undeliverable. Paul and Yasmin first name addresses may have gone through.

Will wait until Wednesday now to see if their is any response, if not will be filing the application with Court.

Gettingrippedoff

No response again today. Not counting on any response tomorrow either. Appalling conduct, but is that really surprising.

Will give till 4pm tomorrow and will then proceed to file N244 and register the SRA complaint.

Can I get some advice on how to file N244. Can I do this online ? Or will I need to go to my local court to submit ?

Would I need to put on the N244 how much compensation I am also seeking in response to this matter ?

Will I also need to mention the dates I am away ?

Coupon-mad

Compensation can't be sought within an application; you'd have to keep bothering the solicitors for that, which they might once they see you've reported them to the SRA if they fail to explain what's happened...

In your case the claim was already allocated to the local court so prepare the N244 and your signed WS about why the judgment must be set aside then when you are happy with it, ring the local court and ask to pay the fee and where to email it.

Gettingrippedoff

So I have to remove any mention of compensation sought from my draft I currently have and focus on why judgement needs to be set aside?

So I am going to have to pay the Court Fee ? How will I claim this back ? Thought that was paid once judge made decision.

This is to stressful at the moment. Should be looking forward to going away next week. instead I’ve had this on my mind the last 2 weeks.

Gettingrippedoff

@Coupon-mad and all. Today i received the following at 15:40 (20 minutes before the deadline I set them).

"Thank you for your email of 7 April, the content of which we have noted. We do however deem the timeframe in which you have requested a response, to be unreasonable. Our offices were closed from 6th - 11th April for the Bank Holiday weekend.

Notwithstanding the above, we can confirm that we did Discontinue this claim back in July 2022, there has since been no Hearing and we did not make any representations. We deem the Judgment to be a Court error. Please see the attached email we sent to the Court on 31 March 2022, this was sent when we immediately became aware of the Court error. The content of the attached email is self-explanatory.

We are waiting for the Judge to review this matter and produce an Order essentially setting aside the previous Order (granting Judgment), as it is clear this is a Court error in which they have mixed up our case with another.

As soon as we receive the Court's response, we will update you and we appreciate your patience in the interim."

I will be replying back later to let them know they could have replied to my email sent on 31st March with the above and saved me the stress of the last 2 weeks.

They have also sent me a copy of the email they sent to the court asking for order to be set aside. Does this seem like a genuine mistake on their part ?

Am I right in that I no longer need to file the N244 to the court ?

Would you say I still register a SRA complaint ?