Minster Baywatch Claim Form Received

Coupon-mad

Remove ALL this as it's repetition (worse, it's an admission) and has more than a whiff of ChatGPT, which us regulars detest!

"This lack of visibility contributed to an unintentional oversight of any specific terms. There was no intention of violating any parking rules and"

Zach20161

Great thanks, so now I have all of the template defence + CEL vs Chan + the facts. 

Zach20161

Is that enough for a defence submission? I do not believe I have anything else to add.

Coupon-mad

Within the template defence, with all 4 pages of Chan embedded too, yes. All is fine!

Zach20161

Ah yes, just one last point. I've left it out because I'm not sure it has any form of credible defence. I moved house in end of August/beginning of September. The issue date on the NTK was 6th September, I hadn't updated my DVLA until mid-end September.

All correspondence was then of course sent to my old address because that was the address on my DVLA at the given time - completely poor timing to get a NTK. However, after the NTK, if they had bothered to check, my DVLA address would've been updated to a new address and all correspondence thereafter should have landed at my doorstep.

Once again, it's my fault for not updating the address as soon as I moved, but realistically, who does? 

Coupon-mad

No you were REALLY quick to update it so there's no fault of yours there.  Did the claim form come to the right address? 

Zach20161

No, no correspondence came to my current address. All sent to my old dvla address 

Zach20161

Is that point able to be used in my defence? If not, I will look to submit the defence today.

troublemaker22

@Zach20161.  You can add some preliminary paragraphs before all the substantive defence paragraphs as follows.

Abuse of the Court’s process by way of improper service

1.  As a preliminary point the allocating judge is respectfully requested to strike out the Claim as an abuse of the Court's process for the reasons specified in paragraphs 2-6 (inclusive) below. 

2. Rule 6.9(3) provides that 'where a claimant has reason to believe that the address of the defendant referred to in entries 1, 2 or 3 in the table in paragraph (2) is an address at which the defendant no longer resides or carries on business, the claimant must take reasonable steps to ascertain the address of the defendant’s current residence or place of business'.

3. In this case, the Claimant caused the Court to send the Claim Form to the address it received from the DVLA as the Defendant's address in September 2023 and it was to this address that all pre-action correspondence from the Claimant and its representatives was sent.  However, the Defendant moved home during September 2023 and duly updated the vehicle's registered address at DVLA shortly after the Claimant obtained their prior address from the DVLA.

4.  As a result of the facts specified in paragraph 3 above, the Defendant did not receive or respond to any of the pre-action correspondence from the Claimant and its representatives and it is probable that some (if not all) of this correspondence was returned to the sender by the relevant mail carrier.  Regardless of whether such correspondence was returned, it is common knowledge that people move home from time to time and the fact that the Defendant did not respond to any such correspondence in and of itself gave the Claimant reason to believe that the Defendant no longer resided at their old address.

5.  The Claimant could at minimal expense have performed a 'soft trace' to ascertain the Defendant's current address before issuing proceedings.  However, it is common practice for private parking companies to defer performing soft traces in cases such as this one until after judgment has been obtained in flagrant defiance of the obligation in CPR 6.(9)(3).

6. The claim form has not been validly served by reason of the Claimant’s abuse of the Court’s process and the allocating judge is respectfully invited to strike out the Claim as an abuse of the process of the Court using the Court’s powers pursuant to Civil Procedure Rule 3.4 and to do so as the Claim is for a very small amount, well within the small claims limit, without granting permission to the Claimant to re-serve the claim. 

troublemaker22

@Zach20161

ps, in retrospect it might have been better to move straight to defence without filing an acknowledgment of service but we are where we are.  Obviously, you need to specify your current address as your address for service at the end of the Defence.  Hopefully you did likewise on your AOS but please confirm.