PCN County Court Claim Defence Advice

Coupon-mad

Why not be proactive and email DCB Legal now, saying the Court has confirmed they failed to pay the hearing fee in claim number xxxxxx but you have been spending considerable time on your witness statement bundle, which is due this week. As such, you will claim costs at £24 ph due to their 'unreasonable conduct' if they fail to email over their Notice of Discontinuance within 24 hours.

(Give them a push! ...not too polite. Not 'kind regards').

When you write to a law firm it's Dear Sirs / Yours faithfully

Here's what we need to see (this is an ECP case, discontinued like clockwork today) :
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81745751/#Comment_81745751

MW33

Hello Coupon-mad

Thank you for your response, that is a good suggestion and I have just sent the email to DCB Legal.

I guess they are playing their usual game of 'chicken' to exert the maximum pressure on me and waste as much of my time as possible.

I'll keep checking my email inbox and spam every couple of hours and I hope they do the right thing. Failing that I may be back regarding my WS I'm afraid.

Thanks again

MW33

Hello all

**********************************************************SUCCESS!***********************************************************

As you say on here, DCB LEGAL, ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST!!

I have just picked up an email from DCB Legal stating this:-

"Our client has instructed us to discontinue Court proceedings and close our file. Therefore, please find enclosed the Claimant’s N279 Notice of Discontinuance for your records".

I guess the last piece of advice from Coupon-mad suggesting I send an email to DCBL threatening costs must have spurred them into action, let me know if you want me to add the wording I used in my email to DCBL in case it may be of any use to anyone else although it was fairly standard wording.

This has of course saved me from needing to run by yourselves my witness statement which I have spent many hours researching and I must admit was still a little apprehensive about and still in two minds regarding exactly what I included in it.

May I take this opportunity to thank those who have helped me:-

Anyone in the background who are not named or known to me, and,

Gr1pr
Le_Kirkthe_worm_that_turned
and especially

Coupon-mad

who has responded to my questions so many times and at all hours of the day.

I guess all of you have helped so many people over the years might lose sight of how much relief you give and how much it means to people like me. Every time I request help I firstly have a good level of belief that I will get the help and can trust it, that meant so much to me and gave me so much relief from the level of stress I was suffering. Don't get me wrong, there are way more stressful things in life but that doesn't take away from the fact that this whole process does cause stress and the relief I felt today proves that. Each time I received a response from you I was so grateful and it really helped my mood at the time. The speed of the responses was really important to me too so I thank you again.

In my case I did nothing wrong, I was not the driver, my mechanic was and he does not even know what happened as he drives dozens of customers cars in and out of the premises each week none of which he adds to any authorisation list nor should he need to, it would be totally impractical to do so and my case is the only one he has heard of from his customers. Over many years I have also been in and out of these premises dozens of times without issue it was just unfortunate that on one of the many occasions my mechanic drove my car in and out this happened otherwise I could have been the driver but still in the same position of not knowing what happened on that particular occasion, a very unsatisfactory way of regulating a premises where only authorised vehicles are allowed to park, I would call it sharp practice!

I have already added my comments to the Government consultation and I stressed the one factor which really incensed me which is how companies making multi million pound profits are allowed to abuse the small claims process using up valuable public service resources massively with computer generated robo claims. I would imagine just my contacts alone (phone calls and submission of documents/responses) into the service exceeded the charges the service levy for the process let alone the work that comes from the scammer claimants! Large companies should not be able to use the small claims process for bulk litigation, they should be made to compile individually specific to the circumstances claims through the full court system, then we would see how much bulk they could create, none would be my guess.

Apologies for the long post but I thought it important to make these points and to thank you and reiterate how grateful I am for your hard work, time and help over what is a long period of time and which must be difficult to keep track of especially when you are dealing with multiple scenarios from multiple posters at the same time.

Finally a couple of points.

Firstly, I will of course post my N279 Notice of Discontinuance redacted for your records and wins total.

Secondly, this question, do you think there is any point in me contacting the court to try and claim costs, I'm not bothered about the money, I would gladly donate to yourselves for the help you have provided if I was awarded any and if it was possible, I'm thinking more along the lines of trying to cause DCB Legal as much pain as possible, revenge if you like!

Coupon-mad

MW33 said:

Hello all

**********************************************************SUCCESS!*******************************************************

As you say on here, DCB LEGAL, ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST!!

I have just picked up an email from DCB Legal stating this:-

"Our client has instructed us to discontinue Court proceedings and close our file. Therefore, please find enclosed the Claimant’s N279 Notice of Discontinuance for your records".

I guess the last piece of advice from Coupon-mad suggesting I send an email to DCBL threatening costs must have spurred them into action, let me know if you want me to add the wording I used in my email to DCBL in case it may be of any use to anyone else although it was fairly standard wording.

This has of course saved me from needing to run by yourselves my witness statement which I have spent many hours researching and I must admit was still a little apprehensive about and still in two minds regarding exactly what I included in it.

May I take this opportunity to thank those who have helped me:-

Anyone in the background who are not named or known to me, and,

Gr1pr
Le_Kirk

the_worm_that_turned

and especially

Coupon-mad

who has responded to my questions so many times and at all hours of the day.

I guess all of you have helped so many people over the years might lose sight of how much relief you give and how much it means to people like me. Every time I request help I firstly have a good level of belief that I will get the help and can trust it, that meant so much to me and gave me so much relief from the level of stress I was suffering. Don't get me wrong, there are way more stressful things in life but that doesn't take away from the fact that this whole process does cause stress and the relief I felt today proves that. Each time I received a response from you I was so grateful and it really helped my mood at the time. The speed of the responses was really important to me too so I thank you again.

In my case I did nothing wrong, I was not the driver, my mechanic was and he does not even know what happened as he drives dozens of customers cars in and out of the premises each week none of which he adds to any authorisation list nor should he need to, it would be totally impractical to do so and my case is the only one he has heard of from his customers. Over many years I have also been in and out of these premises dozens of times without issue it was just unfortunate that on one of the many occasions my mechanic drove my car in and out this happened otherwise I could have been the driver but still in the same position of not knowing what happened on that particular occasion, a very unsatisfactory way of regulating a premises where only authorised vehicles are allowed to park, I would call it sharp practice!

I have already added my comments to the Government consultation and I stressed the one factor which really incensed me which is how companies making multi million pound profits are allowed to abuse the small claims process using up valuable public service resources massively with computer generated robo claims. I would imagine just my contacts alone (phone calls and submission of documents/responses) into the service exceeded the charges the service levy for the process let alone the work that comes from the scammer claimants! Large companies should not be able to use the small claims process for bulk litigation, they should be made to compile individually specific to the circumstances claims through the full court system, then we would see how much bulk they could create, none would be my guess.

Apologies for the long post but I thought it important to make these points and to thank you and reiterate how grateful I am for your hard work, time and help over what is a long period of time and which must be difficult to keep track of especially when you are dealing with multiple scenarios from multiple posters at the same time.

Finally a couple of points.

Firstly, I will of course post my N279 Notice of Discontinuance redacted for your records and wins total.

Secondly, this question, do you think there is any point in me contacting the court to try and claim costs, I'm not bothered about the money, I would gladly donate to yourselves for the help you have provided if I was awarded any and if it was possible, I'm thinking more along the lines of trying to cause DCB Legal as much pain as possible, revenge if you like!

You can ask for costs if the NoD was very last minute and you spent time/money on doing your WS and putting evidence together.

This was covered in the final para of your defence and how to do this is shown in post 2 of the NEWBIES thread (2 linked examples).

I'm very glad you did the Consultation!

And...congrats to you:

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST!

However, I am sure you are keen that your success is noted in the disco thread? Surely you want to stand up and be counted?

Because it's an evidence based thread shared regularly with the Government, @Umkomaas cannot count your NoD unless you post a picture of it (redact names & claim number & we do not want to see the covering email).

MW33

Hello Coupon-mad

Thanks for your reply and the advice regarding costs, I will make an application and follow the example you suggest in the NEWBIES thread and I will report how that goes.

I am certainly keen to ensure the success is noted in the disco thread and I will definitely post a picture of the redacted NoD as soon as I can edit the photo (I'm not too good at that but will get some help), I will aim to do this in the next day or so.

Many thanks again for all your help.

Coupon-mad

No you don't make an application,

the_worm_that_turned

I am so pleased for you that a NoD was sent. You do not have to thank me at all, I did nothing - the credit goes to the others in this thread!

What really, really, annoys me is that, as predicted they discontinue and the close the files. As I am sure @Coupon-mad and many others are already very much aware of and fighting, this repeated use of threats of court action (including 2 letters before claim in my example) appear to be a blatant and continual disregard to the overriding objectives of the Civil Procedure Rules.

I assume this is what evidence is being gathered to support and put an end to this.

All those countless hours being wasted by people, it saddens me.

MW33

Hello Coupon-mad

Apologies, I wrote my comment about costs before reading the advice in the NEWBIES thread, I will read that and follow the example method to attempt to get costs

MW33

Hello the_worm_that_turned

Thank you for your post and for adding that you are pleased that my ordeal of sorts is over.

I agree this constant game of chicken designed to scare the public into submission is such blatant sharp practice and it should be stopped. It is sad the amount of time wasted for both the general public like me and the public service.

In my opinion the small claims court should not just mean small in financial terms it should mean small in financial terms and human terms. Surely it must be possible to amend the legislation applicable to the small claims court to prevent bulk litigators who are clearly abusing the process but still allow perhaps companies who genuinely have problems with customers and over the years might end up taking many cases through the small claims process from a genuine perspective. I guess this is what the people on this forum are hoping to achieve, to bring about that change.

MW33

Hello again

Just to confirm I have updated the disco thread @Umkomaas with my redacted N279 Notice of Discontinuance.

I will continue to post any update I have regarding my costs.