County Court Claim

Trainerman

Grammatically, for me it doesn't scan well with plurals where it should be singular. i.e.Para 3 "their" (twice) instead of "his" or "her".  Para 31 1hrs (ouch) instead of 1hr

newuser8

@Coupon-mad, thanks I will have a look

newuser8

@Coupon-mad

I have used the posters counterclaim template as advised and amended and removed some sections to suit my claim.

Does this look fine. I will be submitting by 2pm today.

DEFENCE AND PART 20 COUNTERLAIM

 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 Defendant was in breach of any term at the site.

2. Further, it is denied that this Claimant has standing to sue or form contracts in their own name at the site. Liability is denied - the Claim had no prospects of success under the circumstances - and the Defence is followed by a Part 20 Counterclaim, below.

3. para 3 unchanged

The facts known to the Defendant:

 4. The events below show that the claim is entirely without merit and the Claimant who has no prospect of success is urged to discontinue now and settle the Part 20 Counterclaim and avoid incurring costs and wasting the court's time.

I.            On the 17/07/23 the Defendant drove her vehi into Barnet Hospital car park at around 18:14 hrs to drop off a passenger for a hospital appointment. The Defendant subsequently exited Barnet Hospital car park within a few minutes of entering the car park and did not park her car on first entry.

II.             The Defendant returned to Barnet Hospital car park at approx 19:20 hrs for a second time and parked her car for a short period of time to assist a passenger. On exiting the car park, the Defendant went to the payment terminal to validate her parking and make payment.

 III.           On entering the Defendants car registration number into the payment terminal to make payment, a displayed charge of £2 was shown on the screen. However, on attempting to make payment, the payment terminal malfunctioned, and it took several attempts before the Defendant could pay for her parking.

IV.          The Defendant exited Barnet Hospital car park at approx. 19:43 hrs.

V.            The Defendant was parked for approx 25mins and paid for a full one hour of parking. The Defendant did not overstay and should not have been issued with a Parking Charge Notice (PCN).

VI.          The Defendant believes the parking overstay claim is a result of "double dipping," where only the first and last movement of her vehicle was captured by the ANPR camera, omitting intermediate movements.

 VII.        The Claimant issued a Parking Violation Notice on the 24/07/23 for an alleged event on the 17/07/23.

 VIII.      The Defendant appealed the parking violation notice on 15/08/23 within the stipulated period of receiving the notice providing evidence that the Defendant paid the appropriate parking tariff.

 IX.          The Claimant issued an email on 21/08/23 rejecting the Defendant’s appeal on the basis that the tariff paid for was insufficient to cover the entire duration of time the Defendant was parked.

The Defendant further submits that the parking charge notice is without merit due to substantial issues in law as following:

Preliminary matter: The claim should be struck out

para 5 - 17 unchanged

CONCLUSION

 para 18-20 unchanged

COUNTERCLAIM

21. This counterclaim is for damages for distress caused by the Claimant's breach of the DPA 2018, GDPR 2018, and clear breach of the ICO Code of Practice on Surveillance Cameras which forms a mandatory part of the BPA Code of Practice regarding use of ANPR.

22. The counterclaim is pursuant to the following:

 a) damages for distress caused by the Claimants’ breach of statutory duties under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and misleading actions within the meaning of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, as amended by the Consumer Protection (Amendment) Regulations 2014 (“the Regulations”);

 b) damages for distress caused by breach of statutory duty under the Data Protection Act 2018 and General Data Protection Regulation ('the GDPR'); for unlawfully obtaining, processing and passing on the Defendants data to notoriously aggressive third party debt recovery agencies. (The bit that reads 'processing and passing on the Defendants data to notoriously aggressive third party debt recovery agencies' I was thinking of changing to ' and processing Defendants data' this is because, I do not remember if I received letters from third party debt recovery agents)

para 23 - 34 (para 32 - 34 removed)

para cut down and read '31. None of the justifications in (3) above can apply, the Claimant persisted in aggressively and unjustifiably pursuing their unreasonable charge'.

DAMAGES

 32. By reason of the matters aforesaid, the Defendant suffered distress and anxiety as a result of the Claimant's conduct. The Defendant has suffered substantial and exhausting distress which has impacted upon day to-day life and respectfully seeks damages in the sum of £300 or such sum as the court sees fit.

 AND THE DEFENDANT COUNTERCLAIMS: -

 33. a). Compensation in the sum of: £300 or such sum as the Court sees fit including any award of aggravated damages at the court's discretion;

 b). Court fees: £35.00 filing fee (plus a hearing fee if applicable, in the event that the Claimant discontinues and leaves the Part 20 Counterclaimant to pay for the hearing)

 c). Interest pursuant to s.69 of the County Courts Act 1984, at such rates / for such periods on the sums found due to the Defendant as the Court may deem fit;

 Statement of Truth

 I believe that the facts stated in this Defence and Counterclaim are true. I understand that proceedings for contempt of court may be brought against anyone who makes, or causes to be made, a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth without an honest belief in its truth.

Thanks so much.

newuser8

I am preparing my email template to file my Defence before 4pm today. Just wanting to understand if there is an additional form I need to fill in with my defence attached to let the court know I wish to attend mediation as I'm really hoping PE would discontinue once they see I am counter claiming.

Coupon-mad

You get to do that when the Court sends you the N180 DQ form mentioned in the first 12 steps in the Template Defence first post.

(The bit that reads 'processing and passing on the Defendants data to notoriously aggressive third party debt recovery agencies' I was thinking of changing to ' and processing Defendants data' this is because, I do not remember if I received letters from third party debt recovery agents)

Yes that's fine.

i think your defence would benefit from a statement near the start of both - second paragraph maybe - saying:

2. The Claimant's claim is improperly founded. The timings relied upon by the Claimant are wrong. This is two visits wrongly painted as if it was one long stay.  This is despite the fact that the various ANPR cameras at this large hospital site will have captured multiple images of the car leaving, then returning later.  No-one has carried out any human checks of data, which means decisions to obtain DVLA data and issue PCNs are being made by 'automated decision-making'. This is flawed and illegal processing under the DPA 2018 and UK GDPR. The British Parking Association warns against this in an article from over 5 years ago, with which the Claimant will be very familiar:
https://www.britishparking.co.uk/anpr

"As with all new technology, there are issues associated with its use:

a)    Repeat users of a car park inside a 24 hour period sometimes find that their first entry is paired with their last exit, resulting in an ‘overstay’. Operators are becoming aware of this and should now be checking all ANPR transactions to ensure that this does not occur."

2.1. This same Claimant has lost cases like this before, including this one at Barnet Hospital (the same site as this claim) on 07/03/2016 - Case B7FC00H1 – Parking Eye v Mrs B, before District Judge McKinnell at St Albans:

http://parking-prankster.blogspot.com/2016/03/parkingeye-lose-in-court-accuse-drivers.html?m=1

2.2.  In that case there is evidence - a screenshot of ParkingEye records, not hearsay - and those results show a vehicle was detected 42 times by cameras as it traversed the site.

2.3.  The Defendant puts the Claimant to strict proof and requires a similar report from this Claimant in this case if they are intending to proceed and/or intending to defend the Counterclaim.  The Defendant will send the Claimant a Subject Access Request for the full ANPR camera logs.

-------------

(then in the counterclaim near the start, draw the court's attention to paragraph 2 of the defence above which is the rationale and cause of action behind the counterclaim).

THEN next week, send PEye's DPO a SAR requesting the full ANPR logs of every time a camera captured vehicle xxxxxxx traversing any part of the Barnet Hospital site in the relevant 24 hour period covered by claim number xxxxxxxx

newuser8

Thanks you all for your generous assistance with getting my defence prepared. I have now submitted to the email address on the newbie template 'CCBCAQ@justice.gov.uk' and I got the below response. I just want to check the email address is still the same as my acknowledgment email refers to making a complaint about their service. Has their email changed?

Thank you for your email which may be in relation to delays you have experienced with our service. I am sorry to hear you are unhappy with the service provided by us. We understand the delays that you are currently experiencing can be frustrating and fall short of the standards you rightly expect of us. As a public service, we record all complaints and regularly review points that are raised to improve our service.
 
This service is currently undergoing a significant transition as we take on new work and expand to meet the growing needs of our customers. This means we have a large backlog of work to clear.
 
The service is focusing on reducing the volume of work in priority order and to do this we are currently prioritising resources to tackle case progression work as opposed to dealing with chase up correspondence, so we ask for your continued patience and trust that your case will be dealt with in due course.  We are aiming to recover our position by the end of the September.
 
The service has also recently introduced new procedures to make sure work is being processed as soon as possible. Please be assured that this is a result of feedback received from our customers, as we are actively looking to improve the service being offered. These procedures have seen a reduction in processing time already and further improvements are expected in the coming weeks. If you would like to track our performance please click on the link below which will take you to our latest available information.

 

Coupon-mad

Please just search the forum or a phrase from that...!

KeithP

newuser8 said:

Thanks you all for your generous assistance with getting my defence prepared. I have now submitted to the email address on the newbie template 'CCBCAQ@justice.gov.uk' and I got the below response.... <snip>

Weren't these words buried in amongst all that chatter...

newuser8

@KeithP, I didnt see any such wording. It is unclear if they have received my defence. I will try uploading to MCOL.

Trainerman

newuser8 said:

@KeithP, I didnt see any such wording. It is unclear if they have received my defence. I will try uploading to MCOL.

But it says "thank you for your email.... "