Claim Form - BWLegal

Thanks, I will have a read through some of those! Do you think I should add it into my defence that they added that and that it was intended to scare the defendant into early settlement or anything like that?

Thanks Beamerguy. Will do.

Thanks Nosferatu - edited.

Ok this is my (hopefully final) draft before I need to send it in tomorrow.

In the County Court Business Centre
Claim Number: ___

Between:

Napier Parking Limited v ___

Defence Statement

I am ___, the defendant in this matter and registered keeper of vehicle ___.

I deny I am liable for the entirety of the claim for each of the following reasons:

1. The Claim Form issued on the ____ by Napier Parking Limited was not
correctly filed under The Practice Direction as it was not signed by a legal person but signed by “BW Legal Services Limited (Claimant’s Legal Representative)”.

2. This Claimant has not complied with pre-court protocol. And as an example as to why this prevents a full defence being filed at this time, a parking charge can be for trespass, breach of contract or a contractual charge. All these are treated differently in law and require a different defence. The wording of any contract will naturally be a key element in this matter, and a copy of the alleged contract has never been provided to the Defendant.

a) There was no compliant ‘Letter before County Court Claim’, under the Practice Direction.

b) This is a speculative serial litigant, issuing a large number of identical 'draft particulars'. The badly mail-merged documents contain very little information.

c) The Claim form Particulars were extremely sparse and divulged no cause of action nor sufficient detail.

d) The Defence therefore asks the Court to strike out the claim as having no reasonable prospect of success as currently drafted.

e) Alternatively, the Defendant asks that the Claimant is required to file Particulars which comply with Practice Directions and include at least the following information;

(i) Whether the matter is being brought for trespass, breach of contract or a contractual charge, and an explanation as to the exact nature of the charge
(ii) A copy of any contract it is alleged was in place (e.g. copies of signage)
(iii) How any contract was concluded (if by performance, then copies of signage maps in place at the time)
(iv) Whether keeper liability is being claimed, and if so copies of any Notice to Driver / Notice to Keeper
(v) Whether the Claimant is acting as Agent or Principal, together with a list of documents they will rely on in this matter
(vi) If charges over and above the initial charge are being claimed, the basis on which this is being claimed.


f) Once these Particulars have been filed, the Defendant asks for reasonable time to file another defence.

3. The Claimant failed to meet the Notice to Keeper obligations of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. Absent such a notice served within 14 days of the parking event and with fully compliant statutory wording, this Claimant is unable to hold me liable under the strict ‘keeper liability’ provisions.

Schedule 4 also states that the only sum a keeper can be pursued for (if Schedule 4 is fully complied with) is the sum on the Notice to Keeper. They cannot pluck another sum from thin air and bolt that on as well when neither the signs, nor the NTK, mentioned a possible £229 for outstanding debt and damages.

4. The Claimant has added unrecoverable sums to the original parking charge. It is believed that the employee who drew up the paperwork is remunerated and the particulars of claim are templates, so it is simply not credible that £50 'legal representative’s costs' were incurred. The amount claimed has also changed from £90 on the original NTK to £154 on the Claim form with no explanation or justification. I deny the Claimant is entitled to any interest whatsoever.
5. The claim amount does not add up to losses incurred by the vehicle being allegedly parked for 6 minutes and ** seconds

6. The defendant refutes that fact that any contract was made, due to the meter at the car park rejecting coins and therefore rejecting any attempt by the driver to enter a contract with the claimant. Any contract offered to the driver and accepted must be void for impossibility of performance or frustrated (driver tried to pay but was unable). The defendant also points out the predatory nature of the fixed charge notice leaving less than a 10 minute grace period for the driver to read relevant signage and purchase a pay and display ticket.
7. BW Legal (representing Napier Parking) in their correspondence have repeatedly drawn attention to ParkingEye vs Beavis [2015] UKSC 67. This case can be distinguished from ParkingEye v Beavis [2015] UKSC 67 (the Beavis case) which was dependent upon an undenied contract, formed by unusually prominent signage forming a clear offer and which turned on unique facts regarding the location and the interests of the landowner. Strict compliance with the BPA Code of Practice (CoP) was paramount and Mr. Beavis was the driver who saw the signs and entered into a contract to pay £85 after exceeding a licence to park free. None of this applies in this material case.

8. In the absence of any proof of adequate signage that contractually bound the Defendant then there can have been no contract and the Claimant has no case.

a) The Claimant is put to strict proof that at the time of the alleged event they had both advertisement consent and the permission from the site owner to display the signs.

b) In the absence of strict proof I submit that the Claimant was committing an offence by displaying their signs and therefore no contract could have been entered into between the driver and the Claimant.

c) Inadequate signs incapable of binding the driver - this distinguishes this case from the Beavis case:

9. The Beavis case confirmed the fact that, if it is a matter of trespass (not breach of any contract), a parking firm has no standing as a non-landowner to pursue even nominal damages.

10. The charge is an unenforceable penalty based upon a lack of commercial justification. The Beavis case confirmed that the penalty rule is certainly engaged in any case of a private parking charge and was only disengaged due to the unique circumstances of that case, which do not resemble this claim.

11. If the court believes there was a contract (which is denied) this is just the sort of 'simple financial contract' identified at the Supreme Court as one with an easily quantifiable loss (i.e. the tariff), identified as completely different from the complex 'free parking licence' arrangement in Beavis.

a) Where loss can be quantified, the 'complex' and 'completely different' Beavis decision is inapplicable, as was found in ParkingEye Ltd v Cargius, A0JD1405 at Wrexham County Court.

b) At the Court of Appeal stage in Beavis, pay-per-hour car parks were specifically held by those Judges (in findings not contradicted in the Supreme Court later) as still being subject to the "penalty" rule, with the potential for the charge to be held to be wholly disproportionate to the tariff, and thus unrecoverable. In other words, charging £100 for a period of time for which the 'agreed and published' tariff rate is £1/hour, would be perverse, contrary to the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and not a matter that the courts should uphold.

The Defendant denies any liability whatsoever to the Claimant in any matter and asks the Court to note that the Claimant has, sent a template, well-known to be generic cut and paste 'Particulars' of claim.

The vague Particulars of Claim disclose no clear cause of action. The court is invited to strike out the claim of its own volition as having no merit and no reasonable prospects of success.

I confirm that the above facts and statements are true to the best of my knowledge and recollection.

Signed
Date


If i can add or change anything to help my case please let me know

Thanks all

Found it! Thanks