How to respond to a claim issued for a 2nd time after being struck out?

[lovetemple]

Hi, yesterday I received an online small claim from a contractor for an amount under £900. He placed the same small claim a year ago. He did not do any preparation for the case although he had five months to do so. I spent weeks preparing a strong case against him. He received my bundle and realised he stood no chance. He didn't pay the court fee and the case was struck out. He continued harrassing me and now a year later has placed another money claim, exactly the same. He has not applied for sanctions to have it reinstated. He has had my bundle of my defence for the past five months. How should I respond to this money claim? I'm short of money so don't want solutions with big fees please, as he will keep placing money claims if it has a cost for me!

[DTrebor]

Curious to know the answer to this as well since I think I'm going to be in the same boat soon.

Can one be kept in litigation limbo in perpetuity?* Obviously in the OP's case it was struck out due to a failure to comply with an order, but the claimant would have had the opportunity to file for relief of sanctions, and presumably didn't.

Is there any reason a new claim shouldn't be struck out as materially identical to a prior struck out claim?* It seems ridiculous to me that a year on he can just file the same claim again.

[ploddertom]

Are his Particulars of Claim the same?

[jaguarsuk]

Hi, yesterday I received an online small claim from a contractor for an amount under £900. He placed the same small claim a year ago. He did not do any preparation for the case although he had five months to do so. I spent weeks preparing a strong case against him. He received my bundle and realised he stood no chance. He didn't pay the court fee and the case was struck out. He continued harrassing me and now a year later has placed another money claim, exactly the same. He has not applied for sanctions to have it reinstated. He has had my bundle of my defence for the past five months. How should I respond to this money claim? I'm short of money so don't want solutions with big fees please, as he will keep placing money claims if it has a cost for me!

You'll simply file exactly the same defence, but add to the end of it stating that a claim numbered XXXXXXXX had been started for this matter on XX/XX/2019, defended and then struck out by the court due to non payment of the trial fee. That you have not been served with any application to reinstate the claim pursuant to CPR 3.7A1(8) and that the claim should be struck out as an abuse of process of the courts own volition pursuant to CPR 3.4.

On sending it to the court add a covering letter to draw their attention to the paragraphs added.

[jaguarsuk]

Curious to know the answer to this as well since I think I'm going to be in the same boat soon.

Can one be kept in litigation limbo in perpetuity? Obviously in the OP's case it was struck out due to a failure to comply with an order, but the claimant would have had the opportunity to file for relief of sanctions, and presumably didn't.

Is there any reason a new claim shouldn't be struck out as materially identical to a prior struck out claim? It seems ridiculous to me that a year on he can just file the same claim again.

There isn't a human eye cast over the claim until much later down the process, so one can abuse the system if you want to keep spending the issue fee.

However, if unlike the OP you can spend £255 to apply for strike out, then that is the way to deal with it and ask for costs of the application to be awarded to you. When stuck with a £255 judgement plus any witness expenses for the day of the hearing then a litigant of this type will think twice before pursuing that avenue again.

[DTrebor]

Thanks.* Your first point about a human eye not looking at the claim until later on is what is of concern really.

In your previous post you mentioned writing to the court with a covering letter etc, but at the initial stages of the claim it wouldn't have been allocated to any particular court, would it?* Where and to whom would you address such a cover letter?

In my (thankfully limited) experience the claim filed against me was done online, so all of my responses were done online too.* It wasn't until very late in the process, past the point of it even being progressed using the online system (which for me still says "we will contact you to arrange a mediation appointment" even though it's well past that) that it got allocated to a court and I could address an actual person with a case file to hand.

I guess, as you say, the remedy to get it in front of human eyes early is to pay for a strike out claim, at risk of losing £255 if it doesn't get struck out for whatever reason.

[jaguarsuk]

You address the letter to the ‘Court Manager’ of the processing centre it’s come from and file the defence on paper instead of online. It all goes into a file and when transferred to an actual court the letter should draw attention to the issue.

Applying to strike out is more the remedy to stopping malicious litigants as opposed to getting it to the eyes of a judge early.*

When they have had to pay £255 it might not seem such a good way to harass you.*