My rights regarding a High Court Enforcement regarding an unknown debt

MattMattMattUK

MT1966 said:

MattMattMattUK said:

Reading through this whole thread I think the only conclusion I can reliably draw is that there are considerable holes in the story. I would suspect that you are not being told all the relevant information, possibly a combination of selective disclosure and your daughter deliberately choosing not to understand something. The claims of identity theft seem at best a diversion, the idea that just because joint liability was agreed between the insurers (very unusual in a case of being hit from behind) and that somehow randomly generating a large legal feels bill is just not probable.

You have mentioned mental health issues and I suspect that because of those you are getting a very selective story. As suggested by others a full SAR to both insurers and the legal firms is in order but that needs to come from the relevant parties (your daughters, the parents/legal guardian of the child, not you) and then working through building a true picture of what actually happened. You can then establish where the legal fees arose from, but from what you have said I would suspect either a dropped personal injury claim or the non-parent daughter starting a legal claim in the name of a child she could not legally start one in the name of.

Not sure what you mean by 'considerable holes', all I was after was advice relating to my daughters situation, initially in relation to the DCBL, but it seems to have been directed more towards the solicitors, which is fine, as it also pertains to them as well.

The considerable holes exist because you have said that you do not have the answers to the questions being asked by those trying to help you. People on here will be able to offer you really sound advice (in the non-legal sense) but that requires the full picture, if you do not have the full picture then you cannot give that to others so any help they give you may be inaccurate.

MT1966 said:

Let's just put aside, just for one moment, 'the selective disclosure and deliberately choosing not to understand something', and at least assume that she has told me everything truthfully and to the best of her knowledge (which I know she has). On that understanding can we look at the facts.
As I said, let's just assume for the moment "D" has disclosed everything, and I get your point about mental health but please just go with it.
Fact, "D" did not have any knowledge of these legal fees. Think about it, she has very limited income, so why would she knowingly rack up a huge legal bill ? If was a debt for a luxury item that she defaulted on payments for
and ignored demands for payment, I could understand it.

You can put these things aside, but they very often do factor in, I used to help out in Citizens Advice, a multitude of problems were either caused by mental health issues meaning people forgot about things, stuck the head in the sand etc. or if they were not caused by them they significantly exacerbated them. That is not an attack on someone in that position, but a recognition that most people's memories are unreliable in general and once mental health issues are factored in that gets worse, in court an eye witness is the least reliable source of evidence. 

People know knowingly or unknowingly "rack up" bills, she may have not realised or understood what was involved, she may have racked up bills thinking that they would have been paid by the other side. Often in these cases the fees would be not be payable by the customer if they either win or lose the case, but they become payable if they pull out of the case, moving address and not notifying them, so leaving them unable to proceed may well meet the criteria for pulling out. Knowingly or unknowingly is largely irrelevant provided that she meets the definition of being mentally capable and was provided with the relevant documentation....

MT1966 said:

she never received any letters from the solicitors at any of the addresses she lived at. Probability would be that she would have received at least one letter from them. Where does the burden of proof lie ? As it would appear to me to be a "He said, she said" scenario.

That is partly the point of the SAR, you can find out what, if any, communication took place between your daughter(s) and the solicitors, what documentation was sent and if anything, such as a letter of engagement, was signed by your daughter(s) and sent back to the solicitors. It is "he said, she said" if you do not establish the facts, hence the recommendation to obtain an SAR, at which point it may well be established one way or another.

MT1966 said:

Put the identity theft aside for a second, that was what I was told by the Action Fraud, that it seemed to them that she had been a subject of possible identity theft. I don't know about stuff like that so just took it gospel, rightly or wrongly. So let's forget ID theft for a second.

Action Fraud are just a website set up by the police to generate crime reference numbers for fraud cases, they investigate less than 0.001% of all submissions in any real sense, but the generate the relevant crime reference number to allow one to recover money from credit card providers etc.

MT1966 said:

I don't ever recall mentioning "A" was hit from behind, she was T-boned at a mini roundabout.

I apologise, I had somehow misread that part that he was in the back of the car with the back of the car being hit.
Did your daughter A dispute the 50/50?

MT1966 said:

Daughter D is in no fit state to request anything at the moment and I'm not going to pressure her into requesting SAR's or whatever else right now. I understand that a SAR will more than likely get to the bottom of it all, which is what we all want at the end of the day.

There would be no need to pressure her to do anything, you can find an SAR letter online, all you need to do is confirm the details, fill it in and ask her to sign it, they may write back asking her to verify her ID but if you are more than happy to deal with that process on her behalf it should be quick, easy and painless. 

MT1966 said:
I will speak to daughter A and see if she will do one to insurers and Carpenters, that on it's own may well give us what we need to get to the bottom of this.

All three, Daughter A, Daughter D and Parent/guardian acting on behalf of Child/Grandson will need to write to both insurers (theirs and the third party's), as well as the solicitors involved, any other parties involved (eg. claims management companies) and also your daughter writes to the court they can also obtain a copy of the original CCJ as well as the subsequent high court actions, they can also request correspondence of all communications sent by the court, which might explain how this got all the way to High Court Enforcement (eg. they may have been sent to an old address as that was not updated, they may have been sent to a new address but never received or opened etc.)

MT1966 said:

The reason I reported everything to the Action Fraud team was due to the email attachments I received from the solicitors of 'Original copies' of all of the documents relating to the case file. The ones they sent were full of grammatical errors etc. I found an article online on www.lawscot.org.uk, which had an article entitled 'How to spot a scam solicitor'. Paragraph 6 states:

(Copied and pasted from the website)

6. Watch out for bad grammar and poorly written communications

Letters and emails sent from fraudsters may sometimes seem unprofessional, poorly written and contain spelling and grammar errors. If you notice any of these signs in a communication which claims to be from a law firm or a solicitor, there’s a chance they’re not who they say they are.

Hence the reason I reported to Action Fraud team, they were the ones that mentioned identity theft in the first instance, not me, just to be clear. 

One would think that might be a reasonable sign, but these companies are mass producing everything, they are not solicitors firms in the way you or I might traditionally imagine them, more glorified call centres, processing claims on mass. Also just to double check, this all took place under English law rather than Scottish law?

Unfortunately until you can get all the SARs and the court documents and begin to piece everything together with a who said and signed what and on what timeline you are not going to make any progress with regard to this. There are likely timelines both on taking a complaint to the insurance ombudsman, the legal ombudsman and getting court judgements changed as well as recovering fees. The CCJ will show on your daughters credit report which will also have ongoing issues unless that can be resolved.

From your posts I can see that you want to protect your daughter, that is the right position and an admirable one, I hope any opinions I have given are helpful and taken in that way rather than feeling like criticism. 

powerful_Rogue

MT1966 said:

user1977 said:

MT1966 said:

Pollycat said:

user1977 said:

MT1966 said:

Manxman_in_exile said:

@MT1966 -  are you 100% sure that neither of your daughters started legal proceedings by themselves against the third party involved in the accident?  That is in respect of injuries suffered by A herself and by her nephew?

MT1966 said:

...The insurers must have instructed the law firm to commence injury claims for both of them...

You see, that seems like rather a bold assumption to me.  If I were you I'd be asking telling daughter A to find out from her insurers exactly what happened.  In particular I'd want to know from them if they had instructed a firm to start legal proceedings, and if so, on behalf of whom?  Just daughter A ,or both daughter A and her nephew?  And again if they did, was the firm Carpenters?

Also - and I hate to ask this - but is it at all possible that your daughter A could have authorised Carpenters to act on her nephew's behalf without daughter D's knowledge?

I don't see how Action Fraud or anybody else could come to the conclusion that this is identity fraud.  After all, it does appear on the face of it to be something your daughter D was (or should have been?) aware of.  Assuming she'd been told about it.

(By "something" I'm referring to the claim made on behalf of your grandson)

Daughter A has contacted the insurers she was with at the time but she's getting nowhere with them and is still waiting for the requested info regarding the original instruction to the solicitors. Neither A nor D contacted any law firm at any point to instruct them to act.
Despite it all, A's insurance policy included legal cover, so at what point, and how, did D suddenly become liable for legal costs?

I'm just going by what I was told by Action Fraud. I had suspicions about the authenticity of some documents they emailed last week (allegedly they were original copies), I reported it to Action Fraud based on what I had read on the Law Society of Scotland website pertaining to 'How to spot a bogus solicitor'.

So the fraud you're talking about is that they're not a real firm of solicitors? (rather than somebody else masquerading as your daughter) Surely it's pretty easy to verify whether they're a real firm of solicitors? It doesn't sound likely that a bogus firm would be getting judgments.

This bit about identity fraud is very confusing.
If the OP means that the 'fraud' relates to the solicitors rather than someone taking over the daughter's identity, the firm of solicitors that they mention in this post seems to be a very well known company according to a later poster. Referred to as 'massive' with 1000 employees.

MT1966 said:

If you'd like to Google the law firm, they're called CAPENTERS GROUP, based on Merseyside. I would urge you to read some of the reviews left by people and let you make up your own mind.
 

Just because they are a massive firm, doesn't necessarily mean to mean to say there don't have some dodgy individuals working for them.

They might have "dodgy individuals" working for them but unless someone is e.g. asking for money to be paid to their personal account (and it's pretty straightforward to check you're paying to the correct party) it's not something realistic to start being worried about. And the fact they've got a judgment (in the name of the firm) really wouldn't make sense if there was fraud going on.

It's far more likely that they're a legitimate firm, legitimately asking for payment, and whoever is sending it is a bit sloppy with their grammar.

I think your phrase "a bit sloppy" is a gross understatement. Considering these documents were sent from a 'massive firm, with over a thousand employees'. Allow me to expand on just a few of the errors in the documents and I'll let you make your own mind up. Bear in mind these were supposed be 'Original copies' of the supposedly posted documents they claim they sent.

Firstly, they were all sent on a plain document, by this I mean, they were not on Company headed paper. There were no footers at the bottom of the pages, which would usually have all their blurb about being authorised by the SRA, FCA etc. 
Second, first line of the letter stated, and I quote as written, "Please find a copy Bill.....", I assume Bill has a twin brother or a clone !! I know, just a little error, but still.
Third, the letter then says, 'Please make cheques payable to....'. Problem is, there was no contact address to which any cheque could be posted. They then gave a phone number to call to arrange payment which had a different prefix from any other contact numbers within the firm. Usually, and I stand to be corrected on this, they also provide an account name, sort code and account number if you want to do a bank transfer, they were not present on the letter.
Moving onto the 'copy Bill' that was enclosed. That was addressed to Master xxxx xxxxx' with his address underneath. Are they allowed to sent a 'Final Statute Bill' to a minor ? 
The was listed as follows:

8 letters sent @ £30 each
3 telephone calls @ £30 per call

1.1 hours for 'Attendance on documents' £330, which makes their hourly rate £300 per hour.

The final document which was the final demand for payment and went on about court action and CCJ's and the like, was addressed to my daughter and began:
Dear Miss p......,  surname began with a lower case letter.
In itself, not a huge error, but if you take into account the fact that the exact same error also appeared on the first letter using a lower case letter to start her surname, it suggests to me that both letters were drafted at the same time and the dates changed to make it look like the were written 2 months apart. Either I'm being overly paranoid or something is definitely amiss with these letters.

I think it's the former. As it stands, it's all been put before a court and the court have ruled in their favour. That's what you need to try and resolve, rather then focussing your attention on their grammar.

born_again

MT1966 said:

When I tried to pay over the phone I informed them that just because I was paying the debt, I was not accepting liabilty. I also stated that it was my opinion that I was also paying under duress. She then told me that she could not accept payment from me. She them went away and suddenly informed me that it was company policy they did not accept phone payments over the phone from 3rd parties. I ended up doing a bank transfer instead.
I have sought legal advice and it is now in their hands, but I would appreciate peoples opinions, or anyone with a similar experience, your actions and your outcomes on this.

Many thanks,

Forum newbie

Well the TV program on the HCE companies, they will clearly take payment from anyone to clear the debt.
But that may just be the companies involved.

Given you have already sought legal advice, perhaps best to wait & see what they say. Rather than continue here & appear to have a different opinion on what people are saying with their comments. As it is clear no one has ever been in this situation, they are just passing their own opinions.

I will just leave it there. 👍

DullGreyGuy

What you are looking at is the Word document which wont have the logo, footer etc in it. The printers in the office will have plain paper in tray 1, headed paper in tray 2, potentially alternative headed paper in tray 3 if they rebrand their services for some clients, etc.

The original letters will be printed on the more expensive headed paper, duplicate copies etc tend to be done cheaper plain paper... printers are normally defaulted to the plain paper - I have accidently printed a 150 slide powerpoint to headed paper and had to recycle the lot after someone put the wrong paper in tray1

Letters are created by mail merge and its likely that whoever in the insurer took the details from A just didnt bother capitalising the name so its flowed through into the Sols systems uncapitalised and mail merge will pull it through uncapitalised. 

There is always debate on if you should enforce say English standards and therefore print things in title case but then you can really annoy say those with Chinese names where their name should be written Surname Firstname1 Firstname2 or in somecases (to deal with attempts in systems) run Firstname1Firstname2 and so have a capital letter in the middle of their name... worked with a Chu Ka Man who anglocised to KaMan Chu because she was fed up with getting letters to Miss Man  or people calling her Ka.

£300 an hour including VAT? Would be a relatively well experienced fee earner on that rate outside of London but not overly surprising with a minor being involved. Fees for lawyers can go way higher... have paid over £1,500 per hour for corporate lawyers in large deals.

user1977

MT1966 said:

user1977 said:

MT1966 said:

Pollycat said:

user1977 said:

MT1966 said:

Manxman_in_exile said:

@MT1966 -  are you 100% sure that neither of your daughters started legal proceedings by themselves against the third party involved in the accident?  That is in respect of injuries suffered by A herself and by her nephew?

MT1966 said:

...The insurers must have instructed the law firm to commence injury claims for both of them...

You see, that seems like rather a bold assumption to me.  If I were you I'd be asking telling daughter A to find out from her insurers exactly what happened.  In particular I'd want to know from them if they had instructed a firm to start legal proceedings, and if so, on behalf of whom?  Just daughter A ,or both daughter A and her nephew?  And again if they did, was the firm Carpenters?

Also - and I hate to ask this - but is it at all possible that your daughter A could have authorised Carpenters to act on her nephew's behalf without daughter D's knowledge?

I don't see how Action Fraud or anybody else could come to the conclusion that this is identity fraud.  After all, it does appear on the face of it to be something your daughter D was (or should have been?) aware of.  Assuming she'd been told about it.

(By "something" I'm referring to the claim made on behalf of your grandson)

Daughter A has contacted the insurers she was with at the time but she's getting nowhere with them and is still waiting for the requested info regarding the original instruction to the solicitors. Neither A nor D contacted any law firm at any point to instruct them to act.
Despite it all, A's insurance policy included legal cover, so at what point, and how, did D suddenly become liable for legal costs?

I'm just going by what I was told by Action Fraud. I had suspicions about the authenticity of some documents they emailed last week (allegedly they were original copies), I reported it to Action Fraud based on what I had read on the Law Society of Scotland website pertaining to 'How to spot a bogus solicitor'.

So the fraud you're talking about is that they're not a real firm of solicitors? (rather than somebody else masquerading as your daughter) Surely it's pretty easy to verify whether they're a real firm of solicitors? It doesn't sound likely that a bogus firm would be getting judgments.

This bit about identity fraud is very confusing.
If the OP means that the 'fraud' relates to the solicitors rather than someone taking over the daughter's identity, the firm of solicitors that they mention in this post seems to be a very well known company according to a later poster. Referred to as 'massive' with 1000 employees.

MT1966 said:

If you'd like to Google the law firm, they're called CAPENTERS GROUP, based on Merseyside. I would urge you to read some of the reviews left by people and let you make up your own mind.
 

Just because they are a massive firm, doesn't necessarily mean to mean to say there don't have some dodgy individuals working for them.

They might have "dodgy individuals" working for them but unless someone is e.g. asking for money to be paid to their personal account (and it's pretty straightforward to check you're paying to the correct party) it's not something realistic to start being worried about. And the fact they've got a judgment (in the name of the firm) really wouldn't make sense if there was fraud going on.

It's far more likely that they're a legitimate firm, legitimately asking for payment, and whoever is sending it is a bit sloppy with their grammar.

Either I'm being overly paranoid or something is definitely amiss with these letters.

Probably more the former, and whatever may be amiss doesn't add up to fraud.

MT1966

Thanks all for your contribution. I am now going to leave this in the hands of my solicitor. Please do not comment any further as I am closing this thread.

Thank you

diinozzo

MT1966 said:

Thanks all for your contribution. I am now going to leave this in the hands of my solicitor. Please do not comment any further as I am closing this thread.

Thank you

You can't. Request it be closed to MSE towers.

Manxman_in_exile

MT1966 said:

Thanks all for your contribution. I am now going to leave this in the hands of my solicitor. Please do not comment any further as I am closing this thread.

Thank you

If you are convinced that daughter D knew nothing about this claim and that she is the victim of identity fraud, I'd suggest that before spending any more money on getting a solicitor involved, you help daughter A (who seems to be the only adult who has had any first hand involvement in this series of events) to find out from her insurance company exactly what has happened here.

I think it might be worth the effort and save you from spending more money...

(It would be interesting to know how this is finally resolved)

DullGreyGuy

MT1966 said:

Thanks all for your contribution. I am now going to leave this in the hands of my solicitor. Please do not comment any further as I am closing this thread.

Why'd you pay irrecoverable money on solicitors? (imagine most on here will have a view on if its really going to a solicitor)

A needs to contact her insurer, as said numerous times already, to find out why they havent covered the sols costs. If their answer isnt satisfactory she can log a complaint and subsequently go to the Ombudsman.