Letter Of Claim from DCB Legal.

Juliansnemesis

Hello All,

It must be that time of year as I have received a county court claim and two letters of claim within the last few weeks. I'm looking for advice about one of the letters of claim. The other claims I have responded to in line with all your guidance on here.

Details:

Letter of Claim dated 31st October 2022 for 2 PCN's issued at the same car park by UKPC in 2020. DCB Legal are seeking £320. Particulars of the car park are that RingGo is the only payment option and the conditions of parking are - 'payment of the parking tariff must be made by phone using RingGo services' and 'All vehicles must be parked within marked bays'.

The first PCN I am happy to contest as normal as it is the same as all the others I have received from UKPC - I have made full payment for a days parking on the day of parking and prior to returning to the car park and exiting in my vehicle. I have had one CCBC Claim discontinued for this already. 

The second PCN however I have checked RingGo and for whatever reason do not seem to have made any payment of the parking Tariff on that day or any other. 

My questions are:

Do I respond to the letter of claim as usual for both PCN's i.e. seeking debt advice whilst denying any and all debt owed to UKPC or DCB Legal? and see if it gets left there?

Or do I separate the PCN's in my response and acknowledge that I did not pay the parking tariff for the second PCN issued?

If I did this would I still deny any debt owed to them but state that I am aware I owe the car park the full day's tariff?

Should I still look to contest all or part of it because of the added £60 per PCN in administration fees. 

Should I offer to settle part of the PCN?

any advice would be greatly received.

Thanks,

Tom

Fruitcake

Are these PCNs separate to the one in your other thread? 

What happened when you complained to the landowner and your MP? That is always Plan A and it is never too late to do it.

It is up to you if you want extra time to seek debt advice for each PCN. Personally, I would do anything to cost a PPC and their agents more time and money, but some people just want it over with.

Do not admit liability. It is far more likely that the RingGo system was faulty thus producing a frustration of contract.

You should be instructing the PPC and their agents to combine the two PCNs into one claim. Look up Cause of action estoppel and Henderson v Henderson estoppel.

Of course you deny that the PPC are permitted to claim fake debt collection fees that they have not incurred.

Coupon-mad

You certainly don't acknowledge that you didn't pay because you don't know the circumstances. 

- Payment method could have failed

- Maybe a passenger paid but got your numberplate wrong

- Maybe you were only there to drop off a passenger

- Maybe you paid another way

- Maybe you thought you'd exempted your car as a patron of a business onsite, where free parking is offered for visitors (keypad inside a pub, etc).

- Or maybe the signs were so unclear that it wasn't obvious that it was pay & display.

Have you got the SAR reply from UKPC showing you where this was and a copy of the PCN, to help jog your memory?

Juliansnemesis

@Coupon-mad and @Fruitcake,

Thanks for your responses and in answer to your questions.

Yes these PCNs are separate to the one in my other thread.

I have previously complained to the landowner but to no avail they just replied with a cut and paste response from UKPC themselves. 

I have not complained to the local MP for the area I shall look in to that. 

I do already have the information from a previous SAR I submitted to UKPC. 

At present I have this letter of claim for 2 PCNs. I also have a letter of claim for a separate PCN and a CCBC claim for another. I have previously had a CCBC claim discontinued for a different PCN. All of them are for PCNs issued under the exact same circumstances.  

Is this relevent to the estoppels mentioned above? Have they already had their one bite at the cherry with the original CCBC claim they discontinued even though they are all separate PCNs? 

Thanks. 

 

Coupon-mad

Yes, hit them with a reply like this one that I suggested for someone a while back:


 

Dear Sirs, 

I refer to your latest threatogram (your ref: ............).

Being legally represented, the prospective Claimant (your client) knows, or should know, that by detaching or allowing to remain detached, elements of alleged debts and issuing separate claims, each which rely upon essentially duplicate particulars and facts, is an abuse of the civil litigation process.  

This Claimant has issued multiple LBCs and indeed, claims relating to parking charges with mirrored facts:

Claim number xxxxxxx - relates to PCNs issued on Mon,Tue, Wed;
Claim number xxxxxxx - relates to a PCN issued on the Thursday, relying on the same facts;
LBC dated xx/xx/xx - relates to a PCN issued on the Friday, relying on the same facts.

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.”

In Henderson -v- Henderson [1843] 67 ER 313 the court noted the following:
(i) when a matter becomes subject to litigation, the parties are required to advance their whole case;
(ii) the Court will not permit the same parties to re-open the same subject of litigation regarding matters which should have been advanced in the earlier litigation, but were not owing to negligence, inadvertence, or error;
(iii) this bar applies to all matters, both those on which the Court determined in the original litigation and those which would have been advanced if the party in question had exercised ''reasonable diligence''.

By the Claimant's negligence or by intent, filing or threatening multiple claims, potentially allowing them to continue to be listed by the courts for separate hearings and then blithely and routinely discontinuing case by case, when each one nears hearing stage and the consumer victim has not 'come to heel' permits of no reasonable explanation.

The Courts and myself will have had to make preparations for separate court hearings, causing unnecessary cost in time and money, and specifically in terms of duplicating the paperwork, intimidation and distress for me as a Litigant in Person.

By filing the first claim and failing to advance their whole case at that time, any cause of action was immediately extinguished for any other similar fact parking charges against myself as Defendant.  The courts may estop a second/third claim where the cause of action is substantially the same.

If you persist, I will invite the court to vacate any subsequently-listed hearings. summarily dismiss the later claims under the grounds of 'cause of action estoppel' and to apply appropriate sanctions against the Claimant.  I will be seeking my full costs from the Claimant, whose conduct in the pre- and post-action phases has been wholly unreasonable.

Ignorance of the existence of cause of action estoppel is no excuse.  My research discovered the above authorities and I am just a LiP forced to spend hours trying to get up to speed with a process I had never experienced before until your aggressive client set its sights on me.

By contrast, this is a Claimant and 'legal' firm who are well used to the court process.  The conduct of this Claimant and their legal representatives has been vexatious and when their course of conduct is taken as a whole, it certainly meets the bar set in Dammermann v Lanyon Bowdler LLP [2017] EWCA Civ 269 which I believe will pave the way for the court to order the Claimant to pay my full costs.

The message for your client is to cease and desist, and if they fail to understand, may I refer them - and you - to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram.

Yours faithfully,

Fruitcake

Complain to your MP, and either copy in the MP from the material location or ask your MP to contact them on your behalf.

I found this site useful. 

WriteToThem - Email your Councillor, MP, MSP, MS, MLA or London Assembly Member for free

Juliansnemesis

@Coupon-mad,

This is great. I'll use it ro respond to this most recent LBC.

Coupon-mad

Obviously tweak the claim numbers & PCN dates to suit.  Did you look up that final case (the last word)?!

Juliansnemesis

@Coupon-mad,

I have just sent off the email this morning, including the reference to the response in Arkell Vs Pressdram, Very good!  .

Thanks again and we'll see what happens with this one. 

JN.

Juliansnemesis

Good Morning @Coupon-mad @Fruitcake,

Unfortunately the email response to DCB Legal did not do the trick. I have now received a CCBC claim form for these two PCN's. I am going to write a letter today to the local MP and explain just how much stress and upset all of this is causing me.

Moving forward with the acknowledgement of service on MCOL, and subsequently my defence statement, do I continue to assert that I do not owe the claimant any part of the debt even though as stated above I cannot find proof of payment for one of the PCN's? Or do I admit to owing part of the debt i.e. the £6.50 parking tariff only? 

With this new claim and the ongoing one they are attempting to get £800 off me for £19.50 of parking. 

Thanks in advance for your help and guidance.

JN.

Coupon-mad

You do not admit to any of the alleged debt because the claim isn't trying to claim the tariff/fee. You also do not admit because that isn't then a 'defended' case.

You would not get a hearing or the usual progress/discontinuance. 

As other claims are/were already filed in dribs and drabs, search the forum for Henderson estoppel defence and copy a recent one where someone used that argument within the template defence.

There are loads, your case is not unusual.