Cowboy builder - Small Claims questions, please!

macman

If you have legal cover then it will be shown in your home insurance policy schedule. No need to call them, it will all be in the paperwork.

Sessionz

macman said:

If you have legal cover then it will be shown in your home insurance policy schedule. No need to call them, it will all be in the paperwork.

Hi, it turns out we don't have legal cover, we struck out on that one.

Sessionz

DullGreyGuy said:

Sessionz said:
This is where we are confused, because guides online seem to talk about what steps you need to take if making a claim, but not so much about when defending and then counterclaiming.

As in most cases it's the consumer litigating as you pay in advance hence most advices focus on this online.

Rules of court are defined by the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) however judges have a reasonable high level of discretion.  The court is seen as the last resort and not the first solution. Hence if you are claiming from someone you should evidence you have tried to deal with matters outside of the court room by a LBA etc. Failure to do so doesn't invalidate your claim but may mean the judge will consider if it's appropriate to award costs or not etc. Counterclaims have a slightly lower hurdle rate to get over as the claimant has already decided to involve the court.

Sessionz said:

macman said:

Please don't rely on CAB for legal advice, they do their best but it's probably way out of their depth with a case like this.

Hi, we were recommended so often to speak to CAB that we thought their advice would be rock solid. I'll keep that in mind, thank you.

Its not, they are well intentioned and in some areas (eg benefits) their advices are better than other areas but ultimately you are speaking to a call centre volunteer in most cases and not a trained lawyer.

As a former insurance claims handler, the only thing worse than a policyholder saying they'd spoken to the CAB was them saying the police had advised.

We had tried to negotiate with the kitchen fitter, this can all be seen in emails. It only stopped and went to a money claim because the fitter decided to do this. Although the fitter is lying and saying in his claim that we wouldn't let him in the house, or communicate with him, we have all the emails to show it's pure lies.

1) With this being the situation, do you think it is still wise for us to go with an LBA first?

2) We have about 12 days left to submit our defence and counterclaim. I know we can reasonably complete the LBA process in that time if we give the fitter 7 days to reply, but it is tight. If he does reply though (let's say he agrees to mediation), does this mean that he has to first withdraw his money claim? 

Thanks so much for all this help, I've been really lost trying to work this all out myself.

DullGreyGuy

1) if they have litigated already it cannot strictly be a letter before action because action has already started. Until the day you see the judge you can continue to negotiate to try and avoid their ruling. There is no harm in advising them of your intent to make a counter claim

2) Depends on your conditions, withdrawing his claim means he loses his fees paid to date so realistically that is fairly unlikely.