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I recently attended court as a witness for my wife defending against a claim on a credit card debt of £4K. This has been in dispute since 2012 with the original lender but was sold on. There have been numerous s.78 requests during that period, the responses always coming back with the same application form and T&C's. A letter before action arrived while we were away last year and before we could respond a claim had been issued.
We sent CPR 31.14 and S78 requests and nothing came back for 5 months. We acknowledged the claim and posted our defence which at that stage was to do with the lack of documentation in support of the claim.
When the claimant's solicitors did respond, it was with the same application form and T&C's. I added a witness statement outlining our objection to the delays and pointing out that the "Agreement" was in fact and application form missing the prescribed term and a random set of T'&C's. Unfortunately I had overlooked amending our defence to reflect the documents sent later by the solicitors.
At the hearing the District Judge was not overly concerned about the delays we had experienced in getting the claim documents from the solicitors. He was also quite willing to look at the all matters mentioned in the witness statement even though they were not all referred to in the defence. He was, however, very interested in examining the "Agreement" and the missing prescribed terms as stipulated by 60(1) of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and as described in The Consumer Credit (Agreements) Regulations 1983 (SI 1983/1553). The DJ attempted to understand our argument by reviewing the legislations but there was insufficient time during the hearing. The DJ therefore adjourned the hearing and directed us to amend our defence to reflect these argument. He also suggested quoting any relevant case law to support this.
The advice I am seeking from the forum is;
Do we amend our defence via the MCOL site or submit directly to the court?
Can anybody point me at some supportive case law examples?
Any other advice is welcomed also.
We sent CPR 31.14 and S78 requests and nothing came back for 5 months. We acknowledged the claim and posted our defence which at that stage was to do with the lack of documentation in support of the claim.
When the claimant's solicitors did respond, it was with the same application form and T&C's. I added a witness statement outlining our objection to the delays and pointing out that the "Agreement" was in fact and application form missing the prescribed term and a random set of T'&C's. Unfortunately I had overlooked amending our defence to reflect the documents sent later by the solicitors.
At the hearing the District Judge was not overly concerned about the delays we had experienced in getting the claim documents from the solicitors. He was also quite willing to look at the all matters mentioned in the witness statement even though they were not all referred to in the defence. He was, however, very interested in examining the "Agreement" and the missing prescribed terms as stipulated by 60(1) of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and as described in The Consumer Credit (Agreements) Regulations 1983 (SI 1983/1553). The DJ attempted to understand our argument by reviewing the legislations but there was insufficient time during the hearing. The DJ therefore adjourned the hearing and directed us to amend our defence to reflect these argument. He also suggested quoting any relevant case law to support this.
The advice I am seeking from the forum is;
Do we amend our defence via the MCOL site or submit directly to the court?
Can anybody point me at some supportive case law examples?
Any other advice is welcomed also.
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