URGENT HELP - CCBC stage

Coupon-mad

Choose Southampton as your preferred court (later, when you do the DQ in a month or two)!  Their brilliant Judges will protect you.

Have this as the start of your defence:

DEFENCE

1.  The Defendant denies that the Claimant is entitled to relief in the sum claimed, or at all.  It is denied that any conduct by the driver was in breach of any term.  Further, it is denied that this Claimant (understood to have a bare licence as agents) has standing to sue or form contracts in their own name. Liability is denied, whether or not the Claimant is claiming 'hirer liability', which is unclear from the boilerplate text in the Particulars of Claim ('the POC').

The facts known to the Defendant:

2. The facts in this defence come from the Defendant's own knowledge and honest belief. It is admitted that the Defendant was the hirer/lessee of this leased vehicle in 2020.

3.  The Defendant was a key worker (full time midwife) working shifts at this NHS hospital. This was in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, when the NHS Trust offered free parking to staff and to the Defendant's knowledge, any permit restrictions and parking-related obligations, including any risk of parking charges, were lifted.  The Defendant understood from NHS emails that she was at all times permitted to park at her place of work, free of charge during her shifts during lockdown in 2020.  The Claimant is put to strict proof, if they will say otherwise.

4. No parking charge notices were placed on the car windscreen, and because the vehicle was leased, the Defendant learnt about this from a flurry of purported parking charge demands months later.

5. The alarmist bold text threatograms from various notorious agencies with appalling online review scores - demanding fluctuating amounts of extortionate money with no specification, detail or substance to back up the amounts being aggressively pursued - bore all the hallmarks of a scam.

6. This scattergun generic claim is even worse; the Defendant cannot tell what allegation(s) she is expected to respond to, whether all the charges are stated within this claim (or will more claims follow) nor is the fundamental basis for the claim clear.  The Defendant is unable, on the basis of the POC, to understand with certainty what case is being pursued.

7.  For example, the Claimant states "the Defendant is the driver and/or hirer and/or owner of the vehicle" all of which would require a different legal basis. Given the fact that this was a leased car (making the Defendant the Hirer) the Claimant would have had to have complied with the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (POFA), Schedule 4 paragraphs 13 and/or 14 but they did not. There were no compliant Notices to Hirer served with the mandatory enclosures, for any of these parking charges.

8. The POC are 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”.  The POC are entirely inadequate in that they fail to particularise:

- the number of parking charge notices ('PCNs')?
- the dates of each of those PCNs?
- the monetary amount of each PCN?
- what was each alleged breach?
- what terms applied to staff in 2020?
- how the purported 'collection charges' arose?
- how much these were, who were they paid to and why have multiple charges been applied (seemingly) 'per PCN' rather than per claim?
- the cause of action?
- whether the Defendant is being pursued under the POFA?
- the 'relevant obligation' (POFA)?
- the breakdown of the exaggerated quantum?
- the alleged loss, if any?
- how and when 'adequate notice' of the risk of a parking charge was specifically communicated to NHS staff, once the parking restrictions were reinstated?
- the legitimate interest in pursuing a NHS Keyworker that the Claimant knew (from the VRM permit exemption records before and after lockdown) was a staff member who had a permit.

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 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.’”  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. 

10. 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. 

11. Should the claim get past Directions Questionnaire scrutiny by a Judge, and continue after allocation to the small claims track, the Defendant avers that the Claimant will concede that no financial loss has arisen.  In order to impose an inflated parking charge, as well as proving a term was breached, there must be:

(i). a compelling 'legitimate interest' extending beyond mere compensation for loss, and

(Ii). 'adequate notice' of the 'penalty' clause (charge) which, in the case of a car park, requires prominent signs and lines and specifically at a Hospital at a time of ever-changing rules during the pandemic, additional proof that the obligations and risks of charges were clearly stated to be reinstated (if they were), and when/how this was communicated.

12. The Defendant denies (i) or (ii) have been met. The charge imposed, in all the circumstances is a penalty, not saved by ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis [2015] UKSC67 ('the Beavis case'), which is fully distinguished.


Exaggerated Claim and 'market failure' currently being addressed by UK Government

13. The alleged 'core debt' from any parking charge cannot exceed £100 (the industry cap).  It is denied that any 'Debt Fees' or damages were actually paid or incurred by this Claimant, who is put to strict proof of:

(i). the information in paragraph 8 (above) which is not pleaded in the POC, and

(ii). a breakdown of how they arrived at the enhanced sum in the POC, including how interest was calculated, which looks to be improperly applied on the entire inflated sum, as if that was all overdue from January 2021 (which cannot be right because the BPA Code of Practice clause 24.4 requires at least two more letters to be served over a period of two months after a postal Notice to Hirer/keeper, before a case may be escalated to what may be described as 'debt recovery'). The Defendant avers that enhancing their claim to interest on either impermissible sums or on an incorrect basis, is reason enough to disallow a wholly unreasonably inflated claim.

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Then the rest of the template defence, re-numbered 14 onwards, so that you have about 40 paragraphs.
Usual headings at the top - see Template Defence.

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KeithP

Yasmin, your full name, address and Claim Number are visible through your poor masking of that Claim Form.

Coupon-mad

Can you re-post it with better redactions?

Yaz_1980

Coupon-mad said:

Can you re-post it with better redactions?

I hope this is better 

Coupon-mad

Thankyou.  Have you read the other thread like yours, only she has a £3600 claim and is a midwife from SE London?

She and her colleagues are keen to publicise this 'extortion' attempt.  I am going to send her an email address or two of a journalist.

Do you want the same info?

All cases will be stronger if a group of you can highlight that NHS staff at more than one Hospital have been targeted with massively inflated claims, years after the incidents.

Yaz_1980

Coupon-mad said:

Thankyou.  Have you read the other thread like yours, only she has a £3600 claim and is a midwife from SE London?

She and her colleagues are keen to publicise this 'extortion' attempt.  I am going to send her an email address or two of a journalist.

Do you want the same info?

All cases will be stronger if a group of you can highlight that NHS staff at more than one Hospital have been targeted with massively inflated claims, years after the incidents.

I have not seen the post, please do include me. It’s an absolute disgrace 

Coupon-mad

Prioritise your defence first but please get together and quickly publicise these shoddy, exaggerated claims:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6468947/county-court-business-centre-aos-check-now-writing-my-defence-please-help/p1