Parking Charge Defence -Excel/ELMS

WildBoar123

Hello,

Thank you for all the advice contained in the stickies. I submitted my AOS yesterday and put together my defence.

Please could the experts let me know if this is ok? I will add on the extra paragraphs contained in the newbie thread.

The facts known to the Defendant:

2. The facts in this defence come from the Defendant's own knowledge and honest belief.  Conversely, the Claimant sets out a cut-and-paste incoherent and sparse statement of case.  The POC is devoid of any detail and even lacks specific breach allegation(s), making it very difficult to respond. However, it is admitted that the Defendant was the registered keeper and driver of the vehicle.

 

3. On 22/04/23 at approximately 1202pm the Defendant purchased and paid £3.75 for a 2-hour parking ticket. The Defendant left the car park at 1311pm a full 51 minutes before expiry of the ticket.

On the 2/05/23 a ‘PCN’ Parking Charge Notice was issued by the claimant for £100 as per the Claimants POC. The Defendant, confident he had paid the appropriate amount could only surmise the ticketing machine was faulty. The Defendant then followed the Claimants appeals process and provided photographic evidence of the purchased ticket, a bank statement showing the £3.75 ticket price and the Claimants own photographic evidence of the vehicle showing the ticket clearly on display. On the 24/05/23 the appeal was rejected on the grounds that the ticket did not display the full vehicle registration.

The Defendant had no reason to enter an incorrect VRN and as the Defendant believed he had followed all instructions correctly, displayed the ticket on his dashboard. The Defendant believes through no fault of his own that a Keying Error has occurred on the ticketing machine.

The Claimant is known to be a serial issuer of generic claims similar to this one, with no due diligence, no scrutiny of details nor even checking for a true cause of action. As examples, the Defendant invites the Court to consider, amongst many others, the following:

i.               Excel v Ms C [C8DP36F0] - the Defendant purchased and displayed a ticket, but a fault on the ticket machine caused the ticket to be incorrectly printed. The case was dismissed, and costs were awarded to the Defendant.

Many thanks.

B789

What exactly do the PoC state on the claim form. You are only answering the terms you allegedly breached in the PoC. Do the PoC even identify the exact terms you are supposed to have breached? If not, then you must also add the very recent appeal judgment by HHJ Murch about failing to comply with Civil Procedure Rule 16.4 and the Practice Direction to Part 16.

KeithP

What is the Issue Date on your County Court Claim Form?

Upon what date did you file an Acknowledgment of Service?
Your MCOL Claim History will have the definitive answer to that.

Le_Kirk

In your defence, which must have every paragraph numbered, and taking into account what @B789 posted above, do NOT admit to a keying error, it was a faulty PDT.

WildBoar123

Thanks for the replies.

The issue date of the County Court Claim form is 20th September. The AOS was 26th September.

The POC:

The Claim is for breach of contract for breaching the terms and conditions set on private land. The defendants vehicle, ######, was identified in the ____ ____ car park on the ##/##/#### in breach of the advertised terms and conditions; namely parked without purchasing a valid pay & display ticket for VRM. At all material times the defendant was the registered keeper and/or driver. The terms and conditions upon entering the private land were clearly displayed at the entrance and in prominent locations. The sign was the offer and the act of entering private land was the acceptance of the offer hereby entering into a contract by conduct. The signs specifically detail the terms and conditions and the consequences of failure to comply, namely a parking charge notice will be issued, and the defendant has failed to settle the outstanding liability. The Claimant seeks the recovery of the parking charge notice, contractual costs and interest.

I had already submitted an appeal before I found this website (Not happy they would not accept my evidence! but now i am enlightened to the scam)

KeithP

WildBoar123 said:

The issue date of the County Court Claim form is 20th September. The AOS was 26th September.

With a Claim Issue Date of 20th September, and having filed an Acknowledgment of Service in a timely manner, you have until 4pm on Monday 23rd October 2023 to file your Defence.

That's over three weeks away. Plenty of time to produce a Defence and it is good to see that you are not leaving it to the last minute.

To create a Defence, and then file a Defence by email, look at the second post in the NEWBIES thread.

Don't miss the deadline 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'.

WildBoar123

Hello,

I have revised the defence below, what do you think?

1. The Defendant asserts that the ticketing machine in question was faulty on the date in question, causing a discrepancy between the purchased ticket and the vehicle registration number (VRN). Despite the Defendant's confidence in having paid the correct parking fee, a malfunction in the ticketing machine led to the issuance of an inaccurate ticket.

2. The Defendant diligently followed the instructions provided by the Claimant's parking system. The Defendant firmly believes that they accurately followed the procedure for ticket purchase and display, intending to comply with all requirements.

3. In response to the Parking Charge Notice (PCN), the Defendant promptly initiated the Claimant's appeals process. The Defendant submitted photographic evidence of the purchased ticket, a bank statement displaying the £3.75 ticket price, and the Claimant's own photographic evidence demonstrating that the ticket was visibly displayed in the vehicle.

4. Despite the compelling evidence submitted by the Defendant, the appeal was unjustly rejected by the Claimant, citing a minor discrepancy regarding the full display of the vehicle registration number on the ticket. The Defendant contends that the rejection was unwarranted and failed to acknowledge the circumstances surrounding the ticketing machine malfunction.

5. The Defendant took all reasonable steps to display the ticket as per the instructions provided by the Claimant's parking system. The Defendant had a legitimate belief that the ticket was correctly displayed, and the malfunction of the ticketing machine was beyond their control.

B789

Why not use the template defence and just state in your para #3 why you parked at the location and you did purchase a valid P&D ticket. The PoC are so sparse and vague, why are you doing the claimants job for them but explaining everything in your defence?

You can flesh everything else out at WS stage. The template defence already tells the court that the PoC are sparse and inadequate. You want to try and get this thrown out at allocation stage because of sparse PoC that make it difficult to defend.

WildBoar123

I will be using the template,

How is this?

3. The defendant parked his car, purchased and displayed a valid ticket and left the car park all within the allotted time limit.

Coupon-mad

WildBoar123 said:

I will be using the template,

How is this?

3. The defendant parked his car, purchased and displayed a valid ticket and left the car park all within the allotted time limit.

Hmmm I liked your 1, 2, 3 which - if you use them - will in fact be numbered 3, 4 and 5 within the template defence.

I see from the appeal rejection that the machine only printed what looks like an error code 'S' so I do think you should also add:


6.  There is a statutory test of fairness that courts must apply (s71 Consumer Rights Act 2015).  There are issues that render this parking charge to be unfair, out of all proportion and purely penal (i.e. no legitimate interest saves it) and this, it is unenforceable:

(a). Placing the burden on the driver to input a full VRM on a notoriously faulty Excel Parking keypad (at a site where the system has already recorded the correct VRM via ANPR, thus the system is capable of presenting the driver with the full VRM as soon as he or she starts to type) is unfairly weighted against consumers.  This is just the type of 'concealed pitfall or trap' that the Supreme Court held would not save a claim from falling foul of the penalty rule, which was said to be 'engaged' in all parking cases.

(b). This unfairness specifically breaches the CRA 2015 and it is why the DLUHC has completely banned parking charges from being pursued for 'keypad errors' and also requires human checks to avoid unfair PCNs.  The Government takes the view that the machine should be linked to the ANPR so that it is impossible to buy a ticket without the full registration. There is no commercial justification, fairness or justice in knowingly issuing PCNs for VRM 'errors' which actually arise from system glitches that print error codes instead of the full VRM that drivers type.

(c). The ticket/receipt has only printed the letter 'S' and on the balance of probabilities that digit is an error code, as seen in other cases that this same, notorious ex-wheelclamper Claimant has lost in court.  Transcripts will be provided in evidence before the hearing. Examples include:

(i). Claim no. C8DP11F9 – Excel v Mrs S – 09/09/2016, Oldham Court, about the machine failure that caused a ticket to print an error code 'QQ' as discussed here which is not news to this serial bulk litigator: http://parking-prankster.blogspot.com/2016/09/excel-parking-get-gladstonedby-bw-legal.html?m=1

(ii). Then there was another one from Excel Parking Services Ltd, with the error code printed by the machine showing as a single letter 'P'; a case which was also dismissed by a Judge: http://parking-prankster.blogspot.com/2016/10/bw-legal-how-to-winlose-claim.html?m=1

(d) This Claimant has seen the P&D ticket attached to the Defendant's appeal email at the time. As a professional parking operator, even if they initially missed it, they should have admitted that this was caused by their own keypad failure.  Given this state of affairs, there was no just or 'reasonable cause' for this Claimant to have applied for the keeper data from the DVLA. They had the payment logs to check against all along, and their machine failure (the Defendant would never have just typed the letter 'S'!) is their own responsibility and does not excuse them from this course of unjustified harassment that has lasted months and has ruined the Defendant's peace of mind this year.

7.  It is further denied that there were any prominent additional 'contractual costs' which - like the amount of the parking charge - are not quantified in the POC.  Neither sum (whatever those sums might be) was agreed by conduct.  The Defendant denies breaching any 'relevant obligation or contract' and notes that the POC fail to state the breakdown of the various amount(s) sought, nor even the basis/dates/rate for the vague mention of 'interest'.  This bare statement in the generic POC - which quantifies nothing - is no way to properly plead a Moneyclaim: "The Claimant seeks the recovery of the parking charge notice, contractual costs and interest.". The Claimant is not entitled to any sum at all.

P.S.
Ready for the later WS stage jn 2024 I have also searched & found the transcript you need to add:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/im5la2708fmhf3aakfiwb/C8DP11F9-EXCEL-v-SIMPSON-Approved-Judgment.pdf?rlkey=13d60uirdigjtr1ylii21oawc&dl=0

Claim no. C8DP11F9 – Excel v Mrs S – 09/09/2016, Oldham Court 


  

WildBoar123

Legendary, thank you!