Moorside issued court proceedings inside 30 days - is this allowed ?

Brooking10

Hi there 

long story short Moorside sent me a letter of claim dated May 7th 

Demand is for £160 to an alleged parking breach May 31st 2019

While contemplating how to respond based on the excellent newbie thread advice here I checked their “online payment portal” to discover the “debt” is in fact £245. No details provided of course as to what this comprises but pay and it goes away. 

Things were  made clearer when a Proceedings letter arrived from Northampton Court dated May 16th. It lists the £160 plus £85 in fees.

My question is this.

Given the letter of claim clearly states 30 days to pay or respond in advance of Proceedings being commenced are Moorside in breach of protocol by issuing Proceedings and increasing the cost of settling the issue (which I dispute) well inside that 30 day period ? 

Gr1pr

Whilst it may be seen to breach the CPRs, they also had to act in their clients interest in bringing the claim 

See the recent post by troublemaker22 or possibly Johnersh about those 2 exact topics,  sometime last week 

Importantly,  get on with dealing with the court claim,  post 2 in the newbies sticky thread in announcements , especially the AOS online 

1505grandad

Who is the claimant?

Brooking10

1505grandad said:

Who is the claimant?

  Alliance from Cornwall 

ChirpyChicken

Yes because the 6 year time limit is near!
If you had said you were seeking debt advice it may have been stalled

Brooking10

ChirpyChicken said:

Yes because the 6 year time limit is near!
If you had said you were seeking debt advice it may have been stalled

When you say “yes” do you mean :

Yes they are in breach and so they should not be able to proceed 

or 

Yes that’s why they have done it and the Court will recognise that it was in the best interests of their client 

Car1980

Is it allowed? No.
In theory you could land a judge who is a stickler
for rules, so nothing wrong with just adding a paragraph to your defence stating they breached CPRs. 

It'll likely just proceed before they discontinue at the eleventh hour though.

DCB Legal have clearly done some advertising to get their hands on old old cases, and Moorside may well have done the same. Probably some sort of discount or better deal to get their grubby mitts on 2019 cases.

Gr1pr

As I mentioned earlier,  read what solicitor Johnersh said recently 

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81470921#Comment_81470921

So whilst you can add it into your defence and WS, you should deal with the court claim itself 

Johnersh

Thanks @Gr1pr Yes. Just to confirm, the protocols have no teeth.

One can argue that ideally the claim could've been managed better and the LoC sent earlier. The non-compliance with the protocol may be a basis to seek costs after a win - ie if the claimant had followed the protocol we could have knocked this on the head without a claim being issued at all as they'd have realised their case was toast.

but....

A court will never criticise a party for issuing proceedings in time. Parliament has provided for a 6 year limitation, so that is the requisite period within which the claimant must start action (protocol or not). If there's no time to complete the protocol stage, they will simply get the claim in.

The defendant *could* in theory offer not to run a limitation defence to allow an exchange of protocol correspondence, but I think that is added complication where a party is unrepresented and both sides tend to be a little entrenched.

Coupon-mad

Brooking10 said:

Hi there 

long story short Moorside sent me a letter of claim dated May 7th 

Demand is for £160 to an alleged parking breach May 31st 2019

While contemplating how to respond based on the excellent newbie thread advice here I checked their “online payment portal” to discover the “debt” is in fact £245. No details provided of course as to what this comprises but pay and it goes away. 

Things were  made clearer when a Proceedings letter arrived from Northampton Court dated May 16th. It lists the £160 plus £85 in fees.

Show us the POC.

We assume you've done the AOS now?

Use the Moorside Legal linked special wording in the Template Defence thread.

Bazarius

If no driver appeal was submitted during the initial 21 day window , then the keeper was not given the opportunity to appeal it at LBC in line with its own appeal policy  on the back of their pcn .   (Check this - not sure if same applied 6 years ago) 

Raise this in defence as a very important point to the judge because they took too long to issue a LBC then cut it short . 

That’s 2 appeal windows not properly offered to the keeper . 

Laches comes into play too ….