Simple procedure Court Action Private Parking firm

So, here is the full story for anyone that is assisting others:

I went to court yesterday for the first preliminary Case Management hearing. Court in Scotland is a bit different from England and Wales. I'll spare you the details other than to say its a 2 stage process with normally 2 hearings, a preliminary to sort out the wheat from the chaff and then a proper hearing. I was at the first stage. The Claimant was Smart Parking who've been doing a number of court cases in Scotland using Mellicks Solicitors.

But before we got to the hearing, there was a flurry of activity.

The original charge was for 2 tickets. However they looked like duplicates so we raised this in the initial submission in court along with a number of other points including, routinely faulty machines, the claim included added costs that were disproportionate and that they had no evidence i was the driver.

Surprisingly, the court then ordered Mellicks to 1) explain the duplicate 2) provide evidence she was the driver and 3) explain where all the extra charges that had inflated a ticket that started out at £40 to nearly 3 times that, came from.

Mellicks responding by 1) dropping one of the tickets taking the claim down to £110 2) saying that they had 5 further tickets the hadn't pursued and because they had sent a lot of letters which i had ignored, this must mean i was the driver (I know!) 3) Some waffle about contractual agreed indemnified costs.

We then did a further Submission to the court and Mellicks addressing these assertions by saying 1) The fact they dropped one suggested an issue with their procedures for issuing tickets 2) Lots of letters are not proof of driver and in any case i had good reason to ignore them, they looked fake as they made a false statement that the keeper had identified me as the driver - a blatant lie as i was the keeper. 3) it was waffle.

Then a bolt from the blue - end of last week i received a letter from Mellicks saying they had issued an Amended Procedure to add the 5 tickets they had found down the back of the sofa. The reason for is now fairly obvious - in Scottish Courts for claims under £200 no costs can be recovered. Mine was down to £110 so even if they had won Mellicks would have got nada vs £150 for over £200 and their plan was likely to split into multiple claims to recover multiple £150. So now the Claim was up to £660.

So came the day. Summary Sheriff Julianne Martin-Brown - so a slightly bigger wig than usual - looked at the Amended procedure mentioning that they had added a further 5 tickets and was i happy to roll them all in, as it would save everyone's time. I said I was happy with that. It was the last thing I had to say.

The judge then went through the court order and Mellick's response before dismissing the claim entirely as they had failed to identify me as the driver and what they had presented wasn't proof. However, there is a slight caveat - the Sheriff, who was absolutely brilliant and very fair, said to me that it might not be the end of it so watch my mail for the next couple of weeks. Presumably she thinks they may appeal the judgement but my understanding is they only have 14 days to do that.

Anyway I received a letter from the court to confirm that the whole case was dismissed.