defence draft please help

elyo92

Hi everyone,
I am putting my defence together and would like some opinions on the bit where I add my own facts please.

3. The defendant's stay on the property was due to the defendent accidentally locking her car key inside her car, and therefore having no choice but to wait for the recovery company to arrive during peak time (a wait of 4 hours).

4. The intended stay was that of a short refreshment break only. Due to the defendent's high state of panic after the realisation of locking the key inside the car, then noticing a lack of mobile phone signal and battery, the primary focus was not on looking for parking signs. 

5. The PCN was issued on 25/10/19 but the defendant did not receive any letters prior to the claim form arriving at the defendant's current address.

I am waiting for the RAC to hopefully get back to me with a record of the incident. The only evidence I have so far is that of a facebook message to my mum clearly demonstrating my state of panic. I hope this will be sufficient.

Thanks in advance

KeithP

Hello and welcome.

What is the Issue Date on your Claim Form?

Have you filed an Acknowledgment of Service?
If so, upon what date did you do so?
Your MCOL Claim History will have the definitive answer to that.

You need to ask yourself why you heard nothing about this parking event for over four years.
Was it because you had failed to update the keeper's address on your vehicle's Registration Document(V5c)?

Who is the Claimant? 

elyo92

Hi Keith,
Thanks for taking the time to respond.

The issue date is 5th Dec.
I filed the AoS on 22nd Dec.
The claimant is CP Plus LTD T/A GroupNexus via DCB Legal.
I have always kept my V5 up to date so I am not sure why I haven't heard anything until now. The only reason I can think of is I have moved homes a number of times since 2019. Multiple homes have been shared accommodation with multiple tenants who have access to / the capacity to interfere with my post (I had multiple problems with one girl in particular).

KeithP

elyo92 said:

The issue date is 5th Dec.
I filed the AoS on 22nd Dec.

With a Claim Issue Date of 5th December, and having filed an Acknowledgment of Service in a timely manner, you have until 4pm on Monday 8th January 2024 to file your Defence.

That's less than a week 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 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'.

elyo92

Thankyou.
I have been following the newbie thread to the T and am very grateful for this forum. Currently I have copied and pasted the defence template into a word document and am in the process of changing the appropriate sections to make it relevant to my situation.
Do you think my first post is suitable wording for the defence?
My understanding is that the witness statement further down the line provides another opportunity to provide this information in more emotive detail?

Coupon-mad

You don't attach evidence to a defence.

Remove paragraph 4 which adds nothing.

Please show us the Claim form (redacted).

elyo92

Coupon-mad said:

You don't attach evidence to a defence.

Remove paragraph 4 which adds nothing.

Please show us the Claim form (redacted).

Thanks I will remove that.
At what point will they want to see evidence - witness statement or if it goes to court?
Here's the claim form:

[Image removed by Forum Team]

Coupon-mad

That includes your QR code, VRM and MCOL password so here it is, properly redacted:

No breach particularised there, so use the hharry extra paragraphs and CEL v Chan transcript (see Template Defence).

elyo92

Oh sorry about that, thanks for altering it! I have added the extra paragraphs from the hharry page but I'm having difficulty adding the transcript. Is there a link to download the document at all? It just looks pretty ineligible when I copy and paste the photo.

Coupon-mad

Illegible. Not ineligible...

Yes someone has it.  The transcript was first posted on a thread in the Summer.