Midwife receieved County Court Claim Form for parking illegally at hospital car park -advice please.

Jamie_G85

Coupon-mad said:

Nothing wrong with gobbledegook, or 'gibberish' if you prefer, as this Judge said in a similar case:
http://parking-prankster.blogspot.com/2014/07/ukcps-claim-dismissed-judge-rules.html?m=1

No need to post a copy, as long as you get an acknowledgement email back from the CCBC.

You won't receive your N180 till September and there will be time to deal with it after you are back.

Great. Thank you all for your help. Much appreciated 

Jamie_G85

Good morning all,

Bit of an update....

My wife has received her hearing date which is 14th February next year. I have been working on her witness statement which needs to be submitted by 1st December. I have used the WS linked in the newbies area as a base which has helped a lot.

To summarise, she has had numerous fines for parking outside of allocated bays at the hospital car park where she works as a midwife due to the carpark is regularly at capacity and she is being taken on for 2 unpaid PCNs.

I couldn't find a way of uploading a pdf directly but below is a dropbox link to download the WS first draft. I would greatly appreciate any feedback.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/t4emc025fo5vtg1/AAB5xYUZNoU1KXjhGLNltuMXa?dl=0

I do have a couple of questions...

1. I have requested at the end in paragraph 31 that should the judgement go her way, that all PCNs being held against her up to the present day are closed. Is this ok?

2. Is it ok to send the WS to the court and Claimant via email or do I need to post as well?

3. I have put in a schedule of costs and although it's probably taken longer, I've based the time on examples I have seen. Does this look ok? Not sure if the cost per mile is correct either. 

Umkomaas

The linked WS in the newbies has been superseded (the Crosby case should not be used now) by the example by @aphex007 (v3 towards the end of his thread), please use that as the current best example. 

1. I'm not sure a judge would make that determination - others might comment.

2. Email is fine, no need to post unless you're having email difficulty, if you do post, make sure you get a free Certificate of Posting from your PO counter). 

3. I can't see a Schedule of Costs. Can you post it here for more advice on it. 

Be aware that many courts won't accept emails with more than 50 pages attached, you might want to call the allocated court to check before you send. 

Coupon-mad

And don't email it to the CCBC email as that's just the initial admin centre at Northampton.

Jamie_G85

Thanks for the reply both. I'm away until Monday so I'll take a look at the current example and adjust as necessary. Hope it's not too much.

I've emailed the court and they said over 50 pages is fine as long as documents don't exceed 35mb, which is good as it now gives me a few more days to finalise.

Jamie_G85

Good morning all,

I have updated the WS based on Umkomaas last response and removed any reference to the Crosby case. I have looked at the new example suggested and used it as a guide. It has been very useful so thanks for that and credit to @aphex007.

Below is a link to the second draft....
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/t4emc025fo5vtg1/AAB5xYUZNoU1KXjhGLNltuMXa?dl=0

Again, I'd appreciate any feedback. Deadline day is tomorrow so I will be submitting it later this evening.

I have left the request to close off all PCNs currently held against her if she wins the case. I feel like there's no harm in requesting this as I'm sure I read that all claims should be put into one when going to court and I know they hold more charges on different dates.

I was working on it until 1am this morning so there may well be a few mistakes with page numbers or referencing but I will be thoroughly reading through it again before submitting.

Jamie_G85

***UPDATE*** - Case struck out

Good morning all,

Just an update. My wife had her court hearing yesterday and I went along as a lay representative. The Claimant wrote to the court beforehand and explained that they won't be attending and will let the judge decide the outcome based on their submitted trial pack.
This didn't appear to go down well with the judge and his words were 'Well they are obviously not confident in this case'.
He more or less struck it out straight away without getting into any depth not to waste anyone's time.

The judge struck it out on 2 accounts:

1. The Claimant failed to provide any photographic evidence of the signage which was allegedly in place on the dates of the parking charges to counteract our statement that the signs fail to comply with the code of practice should they be proven that they were actually present on the dates the PCNs were issued. They only sent one design image of a sign in their trial pack.

2. The Claimant's solicitor referred to the initial parking charge as being £100 on a few accounts within the trial pack, although the initial charge was actually £60 which led the judge to believe that they copy and pasted it from another claim and hadn't changed the detail. The sign image and the original PCN both stated £60 which they attached as exhibits.
The judge also pointed out that there was no breakdown of costs for the additional charges they were trying to pursue and as the Claimant wasn't present he couldn't challenge.

Knowing that there are more outstanding PCNs with this company after SARS, I did ask whether he could order the Claimant to scrap all other PCNs to date with this company as parking has been a continued problem up until now, however he said he could only deal with the PCNs in the claim. I thought this would be his answer although it was worth an ask so going forward we will keep all paperwork if they try it on again.

This forum has been a massive help along the way and to be honest, I would have struggled without it. I would like to thank all involved, especially those who have replied on this thread and those who took the time to read the drafts and offer their advice.

Thank you!!!

Umkomaas

Nicely done. Presumably a court in Wales, could you tell us which one as a number of (south) Wales courts have not been helpful to defendants in private parking cases. 

Knowing that there are more outstanding PCNs with this company after SARS, I did ask whether he could order the Claimant to scrap all other PCNs to date with this company as parking has been a continued problem up until now, however he said he could only deal with the PCNs in the claim. I thought this would be his answer although it was worth an ask so going forward we will keep all paperwork if they try it on again.

Not necessary for him to do that (even if he wanted to) as 'Cause of Action Estoppel' and Henderson v Henderson should kill off any further attempts for broadly similar cases brought by the same claimant. 

That's not to say they won't try, because that's the nature of the computer driven roboclaim juggernaut, where no checks are in place to marry up similar claims against the same defendant by the same claimant before issuing proceedings. 

Coupon-mad

Jamie_G85 said:

***UPDATE*** - Case struck out

Good morning all,

Just an update. My wife had her court hearing yesterday and I went along as a lay representative. The Claimant wrote to the court beforehand and explained that they won't be attending and will let the judge decide the outcome based on their submitted trial pack.
This didn't appear to go down well with the judge and his words were 'Well they are obviously not confident in this case'.
He more or less struck it out straight away without getting into any depth not to waste anyone's time.

The judge struck it out on 2 accounts:

1. The Claimant failed to provide any photographic evidence of the signage which was allegedly in place on the dates of the parking charges to counteract our statement that the signs fail to comply with the code of practice should they be proven that they were actually present on the dates the PCNs were issued. They only sent one design image of a sign in their trial pack.

2. The Claimant's solicitor referred to the initial parking charge as being £100 on a few accounts within the trial pack, although the initial charge was actually £60 which led the judge to believe that they copy and pasted it from another claim and hadn't changed the detail. The sign image and the original PCN both stated £60 which they attached as exhibits.
The judge also pointed out that there was no breakdown of costs for the additional charges they were trying to pursue and as the Claimant wasn't present he couldn't challenge.

Knowing that there are more outstanding PCNs with this company after SARS, I did ask whether he could order the Claimant to scrap all other PCNs to date with this company as parking has been a continued problem up until now, however he said he could only deal with the PCNs in the claim. I thought this would be his answer although it was worth an ask so going forward we will keep all paperwork if they try it on again.

This forum has been a massive help along the way and to be honest, I would have struggled without it. I would like to thank all involved, especially those who have replied on this thread and those who took the time to read the drafts and offer their advice.

Thank you!!!

Yay, well done you & your wife!  Quite right too, as the outcome for a midwife parking at a hospital - but what a waste of your time - grrr!

ANOTHER GLADSTONES (PS24) ONE BITES THE DUST!

And...please don't miss the upcoming Public Consultation to change the private parking law and cap the 'greedy money' down at a lower level.

You must take part, you know how horrific this is and have won your case, but how draining and stressful this crap is - and why should consumers (and Hospital staff) have to suffer this relentless bullying claptrap?

Explained here:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/79803066/#Comment_79803066

Don't disappear!

Please do bookmark the relevant thread linked in that reply and set email alerts.

Jamie_G85

Umkomaas said:

Nicely done. Presumably a court in Wales, could you tell us which one as a number of (south) Wales courts have not been helpful to defendants in private parking cases. 

Knowing that there are more outstanding PCNs with this company after SARS, I did ask whether he could order the Claimant to scrap all other PCNs to date with this company as parking has been a continued problem up until now, however he said he could only deal with the PCNs in the claim. I thought this would be his answer although it was worth an ask so going forward we will keep all paperwork if they try it on again.

Not necessary for him to do that (even if he wanted to) as 'Cause of Action Estoppel' and Henderson v Henderson should kill off any further attempts for broadly similar cases brought by the same claimant. 

That's not to say they won't try, because that's the nature of the computer driven roboclaim juggernaut, where no checks are in place to marry up similar claims against the same defendant by the same claimant before issuing proceedings. 

The case was held at Pontypridd County Court in South Wales.