DCB Legal 2019 Parking Ticket in own private parking bay

unfairparkingticket12

I have just noticed that the second claim issued against me has my name spelt wrong. Does that give me a heads up? 

Coupon-mad

Not really.

Cause of action estoppel is a better point against two claims that should have been advanced as one.

unfairparkingticket12

@Coupon-mad I thought about your comment last night and had a realization. Unfortunately, I have only submitted the first claim and now will be submitting the second claim. Can I get your advice on below please

1- The second claim involves a different car, still owned by me. 
2- The name is spelled wrong on the claim. How can a CCJ issued against incorrect name be registered against my credit file?
3 - The PCN for second claim was issued against invalid parking permit instead of incorrect car parking  from the first claim. 
4- In my witness statement, I got a the second claim date wrong by few days i.e. mentioned 6th, when it should have been 2nd. 

Have a I messed up my chances?

unfairparkingticket12

Just edited my post following your message @Coupon-mad. Please read above post, I think I have made a bit of a mess by the look of things.

Coupon-mad

OK, issue date is 2nd Feb for this one?

I think you just do a pretty similar defence for this claim as you did for the other one, with a far more robust start, as follows:

1.  (Same as defence template...)

.....

2. It is admitted that the Defendant was the registered keeper and main driver of the vehicle in question.  The Defendant's name is spelt wrongly on the claim form and the correct spelling is as shown in the heading above.

3.  This is one of four unjustified parking charges that this predatory ticketing Claimant issued whilst the Defendant was an authorised tenant at the location.  The signage was woefully inadequate and incapable of forming a contract, and the reasons for issue made it appear that the residents were the targets; the Claimant was a pariah, causing a private nuisance on site and PCNs were issued to residents like confetti. The parking charges issued to the Defendant were appealed but no response was received; the so-called appeals procedure operated by this ex-clamper firm appeared to the Defendant to be self-serving and futile.

4.  According to the template Particulars of Claim ('POC') this charge seems to relate to a different vehicle than the other three parking charges.  However, the Defendant believes that they appealed all four, from the same email address each time.  Each PCN letter and demand was addressed to the same two postal addresses (the Defendant having moved in 2020) but at no point were the charges grouped together.  It has been sheer misery and impossible to keep on top of multiple unfair charges.  The Claimant inflicted more and more aggressive debt collector agents on the Defendant who had to cope with a bombardment of several dozen bullying demands for inflated sums, arriving relentlessly over lockdown.

5.  This harassment plus the lack of evidence and 4 x incoherent POC across four separate claims, means that the Defendant is disadvantaged in making informed decisions about each defence without being afforded sufficient information to even begin to work out which is which.  

6.  The question arises as to why these were not consolidated and advanced as one single claim.  It was a simple matter, if applying any due diligence, for the Claimant to realise that all four charges related to the same data subject.

7.  Being legally represented, the Claimant 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. 

8.  The Claimant issued four claims across eight months, all for matters that should have been in the first claim, with near-identical generically worded POC: 

8.1.  Claim number CLAIM1 - apparently related to a PCN issued on XX/09/2019

8.2.  Claim number CLAIM2 - apparently related to a PCN issued on the XX/02/2020.

8.3.  Both of the above claims were issued whilst the Defendant was out of country for an extended time due to Covid.  To the Defendant's horror, this caused two default CCJs (each inflated by false costs and duplicated court fees) and the Defendant - without admission of liability nor admitting any allegations - had no choice but to pay around £600 to satisfy the first two CCJs from his credit rating.

8.4.  Claim number CLAIM3 - apparently related to a PCN issued on the XX/XX/2020.  This claim was issued within days of this current claim and has been defended.  

8.5.  This series of separate claims is dominating the Defendant's life and feels like relentless torture.  This current Claim (the fourth) merely tells the Defendant that it relates to a PCN issued on the XX/XX/2020.  However, the Defendant has already made full payments of £XXX and £XXX to settle the first two claims (without any admission of liability, purely to remove CCJs).  The Claimant's legal representatives were made aware of the Defendant's situation upon his return from abroad but they were obstructive to the point of aggression, refusing to reduce the amounts and showing no concern for the fact that this was clearly duplicative litigation.  Having made full payments to the Claimant to prevent long term damage to Defendant's credit rating, the Defendant reasonably believed that any financial liability to this Claimant was over.

9.  The Defendant takes the point and legal principle that the court should look to prevent "abusive and duplicative litigation" ref paragraph 17 onwards in a decision by the Supreme Court, in Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited (Respondent) v Zodiac Seats UK Limited (formerly known as Contour Aerospace Limited) (Appellant) [2013] UKSC 46: https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2010-0013-judgment.pdf

10.  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.”

11.  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''.

12.  The Claimant filing the first claim and failing to advance the whole case, any cause of action was immediately extinguished for any other similar fact Parking Charges against the Defendant. The courts may estop any subsequent claims where the cause of action is substantially the same. The Defendant invites the court to strike this current claim out, under the grounds of cause of action estoppel.

13.  Further - and in support of the Defendant's assertion that this claim represents an abuse of the court process - the POC appear to be in breach of CPR 16.4, 16PD3 and 16PD7, and fail to "state all facts necessary for the purpose of formulating a complete cause of action”.

14.  The Defendant is unable, on the basis of the POC, to understand with certainty what case is being pursued this time.  The Defendant has had to guess the term the Claimant alleges was breached because the POC fails to elucidate.

15.  The POC are entirely inadequate, in that they fail to particularise (a) the contractual term(s) relied upon; (b) the specifics of any alleged breach of contract; and (c) how the purported and unspecified 'damages' arose and the breakdown of the exaggerated quantum. 

16.  Like the other duplicative claims listed above, this claim has been issued via Money Claims Online and, as a result, is subject to a character limit for the POC section of the Claim Form.  The fact that generic wording appears to have been applied has obstructed any semblance of clarity.  The Defendant trusts that the court will agree that a claim pleaded in such generic terms lacks the required details and requires proper particularisation in a detailed document within 14 days, per 16PD.3

17.  The guidance for completing Money Claims Online confirms this and clearly states: "If you do not have enough space to explain your claim online and you need to serve extra, more detailed particulars on the defendant, tick the box that appears after the statement 'you may also send detailed particulars direct to the defendant.'"

18.  No further particulars have been filed and to the Defendant's knowledge, no application asking the court service for more time to serve and/or relief from sanctions has been filed either.

19.  It was entirely within the Claimant's Solicitors' gift to properly plead the case for four parking charges (as one claim) with detailed POC at the outset.  This fourth claim is for a sum, well within the small claims limit, such that the Defendant considers it disproportionate and at odds with the overriding objective - in the context of a failure by the Claimant to properly comply with rules and practice directions and having already filed three separate claims to the same Defendant about matters involving 'mirror image' causes of action - for a Judge to throw this erring Claimant a lifeline by ordering consolidation of the third and fourth claims and/or ordering further particulars (to which a further defence might be filed, followed by further referral to a Judge for directions and allocation).

20.  In the premises, the court is respectfully invited to strike this claim out.

21. The facts in this defence come from the Defendant's own knowledge and....

(rest of template, all re-numbered).

unfairparkingticket12

@Coupon-mad - I am very grateful for all your support with the claims. Thank you. I will capture the above details.

Galloglass

Were you / are you a tenant or a leaseholder. If a tenant, what does your tenancy agreement say? If a leaseholder what does that say about the demised parking area and covenants for its use.

When you were overhanging into another bay was it someone's (demised) space or the common area? 

unfairparkingticket12

My tenancy agreement was a hard copy and it was given to me around 7 years ago and I seem to have misplaced it. But I'm pretty sure it only mentioned about one allocated bay parking (This bay was also changed mid way through the tenancy through a change of a paper permit).

It was not a common area but an empty marked bay with no other car allocated to it (Also the overhanging parking ticket is 1 of 4). The other tickets were issued for other reasons but veryunfair.

unfairparkingticket12

@Coupon-mad - I've been busy with work so just finalising my defence for submission and have noticed a slight error in the draft above. Sorry I may not have been clear.

4. According to the template Particulars of Claim ('POC') this charge seems to relate to a different vehicle than the other three parking charges.  

The one I defended previously related to a different car. This one is related to the same vehicle as other two, so can I rewrite it like,

According to the template Particulars of Claim ('POC') this charge seems to relate to a different vehicle than the one in Claim number xxx which has been defended.

Coupon-mad

Actually I wouldn't even mention the fact that the other one was about another car.  Turn it the other way and state that a claim has already been defended (claim no xxxxxxx) for a PCN turning on duplicate facts, cause of action, location and Defendant.  Further, two more separate claims (numbers xxxxxxxx and xxxxxxx) have been filed separately, one for each PCN, escalating and duplicating the costs and work for the Defendant and the court service fourfold.  These are all identical matters that should have been advanced as one claim; this is a clear abuse of the court system and the allocating Judge is invited to strike out claims 2, 3 and 4 accordingly (this claim being 'claim 2' of four).

(then edit the rest if needed, to flow better and make sense).