Court Defence PCN DCBL Legal

MovingThings

Hi All, 

I received the court documents for a PCN from 2018. I'm trying to put together a defence and could use your help.

I completed the AOS on the 30th October (MCOL), thought i had 30 days from there but looks like its 14 going off the newbies thread. 

Situation 
I received multiple tickets (MET Parking) for parking downstairs in the residents car park (2018). My permit had run out and MET parking were not responding to emails until i got the estate manager involved. They then were asking for utility bills for proof of address etc.. even though i've always had a permit. A lot of those tickets were cancelled except for some it seems. The estate manager has left but i still have the emails between me, her & Met Parking. Since this time the parking company has changed from MET to PCM and i haven't had anymore tickets. 

Defence
I've been looking at utilising the residents defence and any input on how to explain the situation would be helpful. Additionally, i haven't sent a SAR to MET Parking is that still worth doing?

I will post the draft defence here once done. 

KeithP

Hello and welcome.

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

How did you manage to complete the Acknowledgment of Service on 30th October?
It's still only 9th October today.  

UncleThomasCobley

What does your AST/Lease say about parking? What it doesn't say is equally important. Is there any mention on your AST/lease of a permit being required to park in your own parking space? Is there any mention of a third party being permitted to fetter your rights by imposing charges for parking at your property?

Why was MET replaced with PCM?

MovingThings

Thanks for coming back to me Keith P - I'll update the initial post the AOS was done on the 30th September and the issue date was 18th Sep. 

UncleThomasCobley - No mention of having your own parking space. Residents can park in any of the bays. Not sure why MET parking was replaced with PCM. I'm guessing the council changed parking enforcers. I'll check what the lease says about parking.  

First draft defence below: 
1. The Defendant denies that the Claimant is entitled to
relief in the sum claimed, or at all. It is denied that a
contract was entered into - by conduct or otherwise - whereby it
was ‘agreed’ to pay a ‘parking charge’ and it is denied that this
Claimant (understood to have a bare licence as managers) has
standing to sue, nor to form contracts in their own name at the
location.

The facts as known to the Defendant:
2. It is admitted that the Defendant was the registered keeper and driver of the vehicle in question on 09/08/2018 and 10/08/2018, but liability is denied.

3. The Defendant along with other residents have been subject to the Claimants predatory ticketing.  This has created a miserable living experience whereby the Defendant cannot freely access their own property without fear of bogus ticketing claims and intimidatory debt demands. Multiple complaints were made by the Defendant to the Managing Agent and to the Claimants across both email and telephone. Moreover, the Defendant has held permits both before and after these tickets and have had multiple tickets cancelled due to the Claimant not issuing a permit in a timely manner. 

4.  It is believed that the Defendant's car was not registered on the Claimants whitelist despite the Defendant having contacted the Estate manager and the Claimant to detail the cars relating to the flat, that were permitted to park. There is no legitimate interest to support penalising a resident and it is denied that there is any cause of action, not that the embarrassing Particulars of Claim actually specify anything. The Claimant has ceased covering the estate and parking has been transferred to another company. 

5.  The Defendant has a pre-existing right as a resident to use the communal residential car park accessing resident parking bays as per the Defendant’s lease agreement.

Working on formatting and adding more points from the residential template from point 4. 

KeithP

MovingThings said:

The AOS was done on the 30th September and the issue date was 18th Sep. 

With a Claim Issue Date of 18th 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 two 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'.

UncleThomasCobley

As it is DCB Legal issuing the claim, you must use the following as your paras #2 and #3 of the template defence (it doesn't look like you've used the one on this forum or you've used an older version):

Preliminary matter: The claim should be struck out

2. The Defendant draws to the attention of the allocating Judge that there is now a persuasive Appeal judgment to support striking out the claim (in these exact circumstances of typically poorly pleaded private parking claims, and the extant PoC seen here are far worse than the one seen on Appeal).  The Defendant believes that dismissing this meritless claim is the correct course, with the Overriding Objective in mind.  Bulk litigators (legal firms) should know better than to make little or no attempt to comply with the Practice Direction.  By continuing to plead cases with generic auto-fill unspecific wording, private parking firms should not be surprised when courts strike out their claims based in the following persuasive authority.

3.A recent persuasive appeal judgment in Civil Enforcement Limited v Chan (Ref. E7GM9W44) would indicate the POC fails to comply with Civil Procedure Rule 16.4 and Practice Direction Part 16. On the 15th August 2023, in the cited case, HHJ Murch held that 'the particulars of the claim as filed and served did not set out the conduct which amounted to the breach in reliance upon which the claimant would be able to bring a claim for breach of contract'. The same is true in this case and in view of the Chan judgment, the Court should strike out the claim, using its powers pursuant to CPR 3.4

Coupon-mad

You are meant to use the Template defence, not one of the old residential defences.  

You simply then add in stuff about the Preliminary matter of the Cel v Chan judgment as paras 2 and 3 with the sub-heading shown above.

Then you add in paragraph 4 onwards (add as much as you need) cribbed from the example residential defences. 

How it looks is seen in the threads by @xavian1234 and @Rorythoperr