Court Claim Form - DCB Legal/MET Parking - Southgate, Stansted

Umkomaas

pdel61 said:

patient_dream said:

pdel61 said:

If this wasn't such a compete scam, would it only be the driver that would have to refrain from going over to McDonalds.

If you mean complain to Mcdonalds, you can try but they hate customers hence they employ a PPC to get rid of them.  

No sorry, I meant if people are getting "fined" for parking in Starbucks and then going into McDonalds, I assume as long as the driver stays in Starbucks and their passengers went to McDonalds this scam would have even less legs to stand on.

Maybe, but it won't prevent a PCN being issued and the registered keeper having to deal with all the crap that brings. PPCs consider any minor or technical 'transgression' as fair game for a ticket!  It's the way they survive!

B789

headonfire said:

Thank you @patient_dream and @Coupon-mad. This is so helpful.

I have been reading all the threads and saving all the useful info to prepare the defence. Thank you for the note about Henderson defence, @Coupon-mad.

My plan is to do submit the AoS and the the SAR to MET Parking on Monday, and then begin drafting the defence.

Could members please just check if my calculation of dates is correct to make sure I don't miss any deadlines.

• Claim Form Issue Date - 9th August
• Day of Service - 5 days after Claim Form Issue Date  - 14th August
• Deadline to complete AoS - 14 days after Day of Service - 28th August
• Deadline to submit Defence - 28 days after Day of Service - 11th September
  

Do the dates above seem correct?

Those dates are correct.

Ask yourself, what evidence do they have that you "breached" the terms and conditions of their supposed contract? From those sparse, ambiguous and inadequate PoC, you will be defending. This scam is well understood here but you need to ask yourself, what exactly are you defending against and what evidence do they have to "prove" that you breached those terms? It is not for you to prove that you didn't breach any conditions but for them to prove that you did.

patient_dream

I have been to the site in the past and it is a plot with Starbucks and Mcdonalds on the main plot of a garage, think it is BP

It has been said before that this is airport land
Doubtful Starbucks and Mcdonalds own part of this plot.
Asking therefore, who is the landowner .. maybe the garage leases the land and sub lets to Starbucks and Mcdonalds

Who therefore employed MET giving them the whole car park which MET has split into two. 

There is no logic in splitting the car park apart from the scam that operates

B789

I've been there too. This is 100% set up in order to scam the gullible. There can be no legitimate interest in setting up this car park in this manner.

Plenty of cases where this was defended successfully.

KeithP

headonfire said:

Could members please just check if my calculation of dates is correct to make sure I don't miss any deadlines.

• Claim Form Issue Date - 9th August
• Day of Service - 5 days after Claim Form Issue Date  - 14th August
• Deadline to complete AoS - 14 days after Day of Service - 28th August
• Deadline to submit Defence - 28 days after Day of Service - 11th September
  

Do the dates above seem correct?

Those dates are almost correct but Monday 28th August is a Bank Holiday.

With a Claim Issue Date of 9th August, you have until Tuesday 29th August to file an Acknowledgment of Service but there is nothing to be gained by delaying it. 

To file an Acknowledgment of Service, follow the guidance in the Dropbox file linked from the second post in the NEWBIES thread.

Having filed an Acknowledgment of Service in a timely manner, you have until 4pm on Monday 11th September 2023 to file your Defence.

That's almost four weeks away. Plenty of time to produce a Defence, but please don't leave it to the last minute. 

To create a Defence, and then file a Defence by email, look again at the second post on the NEWBIES thread - immediately following where you found the Acknowledgment of Service guidance.

Don't miss the deadline for filing an Acknowledgment of Service, nor that for filing a Defence.

Do not try and file a Defence via the MoneyClaimOnline website. Once an Acknowledgment of Service has been filed, the MCOL website should be treated as 'read only'.

headonfire

Hi everyone,

Thank you so much @KeithP for confirming the dates, and @Coupon-mad @B789 @patient_dream @Umkomaas for your feedback and advice.

I filed the AoS for both claims on the 15th August and this was received the following day, and I'm now working on the defence.

I have two quick questions:

1. The PoC for both claims are the same, just claiming that the 'vehicle was parked in breach of the Terms on Cs signs (the Contract), thus incurring the PCN(s).' Is it okay for the defence to be the same/identical for both?

2. Regarding the Henderson defence which @Coupon-mad mentioned earlier in the thread, should I also include reference to this in both claims, as the argument is that they can't split these OCNs across 2 claims? 

Thank you!

headonfire

Please find below a first draft of the defense. Any advice or feedback would be much appreciated.

The defence is for both claims, and includes the Hendersen v Henderson defense from points 13 to 17, followed by the remaining template.

The facts as known to the Defendant:

2.   It is admitted that the Defendant was the registered keeper of the vehicle, but liability is denied. 

3.    The vehicle was insured for use by other family members, and also anyone else with their own correct insurance. The Defendant has no recollection of who was driving on that unremarkable day more than 5 years ago.

4.   As a significant amount of time has passed since the alleged incident, it is difficult to know the exact circumstances surrounding the visit to claimant’s site.

5.    The Defendant avers that the Claimant failed to serve a Notice to Keeper compliant with the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. Consequently, the claimant cannot transfer liability for this charge to the Defendant as keeper of the vehicle. 

6.    The Particulars of Claim ('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”. 

7.    The Defendant is unable, on the basis of the POC, to understand with certainty what case is being pursued. 

8.    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. 

9.    The claim has been issued via Money Claims Online and, as a result, is subject to a character limit for the Particulars of Claim 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.

10. 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.’” 

11. 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. 

12. In view of it having been entirely within the Claimant's Solicitors' gift to properly plead the claim at the outset and the claim being 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) for a Judge to throw the erring Claimant a lifeline by ordering further particulars (to which a further defence might be filed, followed by further referral to a Judge for directions and allocation) the court is respectfully invited to strike this claim out. 

13. The Court is also invited to take note that the Claimant has issued two current claims, numbers XXXXXXXX and XXXXXXXXX, against the Defendant with substantially identical particulars.

14. The issuing of separate claims, by the same Claimant and for essentially the same cause of action, is an abuse of the civil litigation process. The long-established case law in Henderson -v- Henderson[1843] 67 ER 313, and more recent authorities, establishes the principle that when a matter becomes the subject of litigation, the parties are required to advance their whole case. In the event that similar matters proceed to claim issue, they must be particularised as a single claim and not as multiple separate cases, otherwise (as an extreme analogy) a builder purportedly owed money by an individual customer, could file a separate claim for each brick laid.

15. The facts of these cases are duplicated in every respect: Claimant, Defendant, location, parking charge breach allegation, and added unrecoverable 'debt collection' and/or 'legal' costs for each case, that are an abuse of process in themselves, given that the Claimant did not in fact ever incur such costs and that they are disallowed by virtue of the ceilings set in the POFA 2012 and the Supreme Court decision in ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis.

16. Multiple claims and disproportionate added costs run contrary to the overriding objective of CPR 1.1, the disposal of cases justly and at proportionate cost. 

17. The Court is invited to strike out the second claim due to cause of action estoppel - or in the alternative, to consolidate the claims to be determined at a single hearing, and vacate the other hearing, and the Defendants asks that these two cases be put before a Judge at the earliest opportunity - before allocation - to apply appropriate sanctions against the Claimant for a gross abuse of process and to strike out the imaginary and unrecoverable added 'damages/debt collector' costs, which do not exist even once, let alone multiple times per claim.

18.    The facts in this defence come from... 

Umkomaas

headonfire said:

Hi everyone,

Thank you so much @KeithP for confirming the dates, and @Coupon-mad @B789 @patient_dream @Umkomaas for your feedback and advice.

I filed the AoS for both claims on the 15th August and this was received the following day, and I'm now working on the defence.

I have two quick questions:

1. The PoC for both claims are the same, just claiming that the 'vehicle was parked in breach of the Terms on Cs signs (the Contract), thus incurring the PCN(s).' Is it okay for the defence to be the same/identical for both?

2. Regarding the Henderson defence which @Coupon-mad mentioned earlier in the thread, should I also include reference to this in both claims, as the argument is that they can't split these OCNs across 2 claims? 

Thank you!

1. Yes of course. The PoC are always the downfall of any DCB Legal claim. 

2. For sure. 

headonfire

Umkomaas said:

headonfire said:

Hi everyone,

Thank you so much @KeithP for confirming the dates, and @Coupon-mad @B789 @patient_dream @Umkomaas for your feedback and advice.

I filed the AoS for both claims on the 15th August and this was received the following day, and I'm now working on the defence.

I have two quick questions:

1. The PoC for both claims are the same, just claiming that the 'vehicle was parked in breach of the Terms on Cs signs (the Contract), thus incurring the PCN(s).' Is it okay for the defence to be the same/identical for both?

2. Regarding the Henderson defence which @Coupon-mad mentioned earlier in the thread, should I also include reference to this in both claims, as the argument is that they can't split these OCNs across 2 claims? 

Thank you!

1. Yes of course. The PoC are always the downfall of any DCB Legal claim. 

2. For sure. 

Thank you @Umkomaas.

If you wouldn't mind taking a look, does my defence above your response seem okay?

Coupon-mad

I'd move paras 13-17 right up to para 2 onwards.