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(I hope this is the right board to post this - if it isn't, please redirect it as necessary).
A while ago, I posted a message about a Consent Order that I signed against my will. Briefly, my housing association had applied for an antisocial behaviour injunction against me because I had sent it several letters of complaint, and I was determined to defend this, as there was nothing about those letters that could possibly be seen as antisocial behaviour. I engaged a barrister by direct access, and he agreed that I had apparently done nothing contrary to the 2014 Act under which the application had been made. However, he told me that even if I won the case, the mere fact that things had gone to Court would make it very difficult for me to be taken on by another HA: he said that they would say to themselves, "We're not having this one - he's been dropped on the floor". As I was desperate to get away from my present HA, I very reluctantly followed his advice and chose mediation instead of defending the case.
At the mediation meeting itself, I was very dismayed at the way my barrister behaved. He seemed to be doing everything he could to prejudice the mediator against me, and when the HA's officers said things to the mediator that flatly contradicted what I had told may barrister (and were absolutely false) he did not challenge them. Then, when I told the mediator that these officers were not telling the truth, and I was told to keep quiet, my barrister was fine with that, and made no attempt to follow up my claims. I wanted to walk out, but I'd already paid a huge amount for the mediation, the HA would certainly have taken me to Court if mediation had not succeeded (it had already rescheduled the hearing) and my barrister told me that the hearing could easily cost me over £10,000 which as a pensioner, was a sum I could not afford.
This brings me to the reason I'm posting this. As we waited for the agreement to be drafted, I was still considering refusing to sign it, and defending the case, if I could somehow get someone to lend me the money, because the HA's case was so poor, and its only witness statement so disingenuous, I believed I had a very good chance of recovering my costs. But then the barrister said this (and I'm quoting word for word). He said that very often, where a public body or a quasi public body commences proceedings which are on the face of it reasonable, even if they lose them, they don't pay their costs. He added that 'there are quite a number of authorities on this'. He then said he expected this applied to residential social landlords as well.
Is this true? It seems counter-intuitive to me, because the very fact that an organisation is a 'public body or a quasi public body' almost guarantees that it has vast financial resources compared to an individual, plus far greater access to legal expertise. If they probably don't have to pay the individual's costs if they lose, this seems very unfair.
This was what finally took the wind out of my sails: this baiister was saying that even if I won, and even though I'm just a pensioner, I would not get any of my costs and would probably wind up £10,000 or more out of pocket. So I signed that agreement, even though I disagreed with every word of it.
So, what do people here think? Was he telling the truth? And how do I track down some of the 'number of good authorities' that according to him say this?
Thank you for reading this.
A while ago, I posted a message about a Consent Order that I signed against my will. Briefly, my housing association had applied for an antisocial behaviour injunction against me because I had sent it several letters of complaint, and I was determined to defend this, as there was nothing about those letters that could possibly be seen as antisocial behaviour. I engaged a barrister by direct access, and he agreed that I had apparently done nothing contrary to the 2014 Act under which the application had been made. However, he told me that even if I won the case, the mere fact that things had gone to Court would make it very difficult for me to be taken on by another HA: he said that they would say to themselves, "We're not having this one - he's been dropped on the floor". As I was desperate to get away from my present HA, I very reluctantly followed his advice and chose mediation instead of defending the case.
At the mediation meeting itself, I was very dismayed at the way my barrister behaved. He seemed to be doing everything he could to prejudice the mediator against me, and when the HA's officers said things to the mediator that flatly contradicted what I had told may barrister (and were absolutely false) he did not challenge them. Then, when I told the mediator that these officers were not telling the truth, and I was told to keep quiet, my barrister was fine with that, and made no attempt to follow up my claims. I wanted to walk out, but I'd already paid a huge amount for the mediation, the HA would certainly have taken me to Court if mediation had not succeeded (it had already rescheduled the hearing) and my barrister told me that the hearing could easily cost me over £10,000 which as a pensioner, was a sum I could not afford.
This brings me to the reason I'm posting this. As we waited for the agreement to be drafted, I was still considering refusing to sign it, and defending the case, if I could somehow get someone to lend me the money, because the HA's case was so poor, and its only witness statement so disingenuous, I believed I had a very good chance of recovering my costs. But then the barrister said this (and I'm quoting word for word). He said that very often, where a public body or a quasi public body commences proceedings which are on the face of it reasonable, even if they lose them, they don't pay their costs. He added that 'there are quite a number of authorities on this'. He then said he expected this applied to residential social landlords as well.
Is this true? It seems counter-intuitive to me, because the very fact that an organisation is a 'public body or a quasi public body' almost guarantees that it has vast financial resources compared to an individual, plus far greater access to legal expertise. If they probably don't have to pay the individual's costs if they lose, this seems very unfair.
This was what finally took the wind out of my sails: this baiister was saying that even if I won, and even though I'm just a pensioner, I would not get any of my costs and would probably wind up £10,000 or more out of pocket. So I signed that agreement, even though I disagreed with every word of it.
So, what do people here think? Was he telling the truth? And how do I track down some of the 'number of good authorities' that according to him say this?
Thank you for reading this.
