Civil Claim and counterclaim

AntoMac

Hello. I hope I have posted on the right sub forum. I have received a civil claim form and wish to make a counterclaim. I understand I have 28 days from date of service,  as long as I acknowledge to the court within 14 days of the date of service.
I want to take legal advice. Can I include costs of legal advice in my counterclaim? Company is a Limiited company and are not registered with any financial body that I can contact re my Iinitial complaint which they failed to answer to my satisfaction. It looks like I can make a counterclaim at a cost of £35, provided I’m only looking to claim a couple of hundred pounds.
I would be grateful to hear from anyone who has experience or knowledge of the CCJ process. Many thanks. 

tacpot12

You can't include the cost of legal advice in your counterclaim unless the other party has behaved unreasonably. It would be best to keep a track of your legal costs and be ready to include them if you feel that the other party has been (very) unreasonable. You can include the £35 court fee in your counterclaim.

Do you have legal expenses insurance as part of your home insurance. If you do, you can probably get the legal advice you need for free.
 

AntoMac

Thanks for coming back so quickly @tacpot12  - Very useful information. 

A_Geordie

tacpot12 assumes your claim will be allocated to the small claims track, which if is true, the advice given is correct. However, depending on the nature of the claim and in particular its value, legal costs may recoverable as the claim may be allocated to another track in the county court or the High Court.

I presume the claim you receive is a county court claim? If it was submitted via the Money Claims Online Service (not the pilot scheme) then you would have 33 days from the date of the claim to file a defence and counterclaim. The extra 5 days is because the claim form is deemed to have been served on you 5 days after the date of the claim.

There are some formalities for filing a counterclaim which means you will need to write your defence and counterclaim in a separate document and not via the defence box on the MCOL website if that is what you intend to do because the word count is severely limited. Also, your counterclaim should follow the end of your defence. Suppose you could use Form N9B but the boxes are also limited unless you have a word version you can use.

AntoMac

Thanks @A_Geordie
Canny of you to reply (Hope that’s the right terminology  )
I will have a proper read through of it this evening after work