Advice on filing a summary judgement claim N244 (under Part 24)

[Rookie2021]

I lodged a claim in December 2019 and was given a hearing for February 2021 with the small claims court as it is under £10k. I'm assuming it's taken this long as the courts are overwhelmed. Having waited for over a year for this hearing to take place, it has now been vacated as the court could not appoint a judge. With this in mind, I'm wondering if it's not too late to file a summary judgement claim, under Part 24, on the following basis:

1- The defendant filed their documents 10 days later than they should have and have very clearly tailored their documents to the evidence I submitted (on time). There is no doubt in this as they have acknowledged and responded to my witness statements on a point by point basis. They even titled their documents response to AA response to BB (for example)
2- Within their documents, the defendant has produced a solicitors letter which I have never seen and has never been submitted to the court before either. This letter appears to have been made up in response to my documents and has never even been mentioned before February 2021. Also rather worryingly, having done a google search as I think the solicitor is related to them, an article about the solicitor acting corruptly came up.
3- The defendant has only produced a series of opinions in the documents that were served late and no actual facts or concrete evidence like I have.
4- The defendant has made a number of false claims which I can provide evidence for.

With the above in mind, please can someone give me guidance on the likelihood of getting a summary judgement and how I can apply successfully without the application being rejected?

[R0b]

Usually summary judgment is requested at the earlier stages of a dispute not at the point when you are waiting for a hearing date. Successful applications are not easy to achieve because you are asking the court to grant you judgment without a hearing. So you would need to show the court that the defendant has no reasonable prospect of the claim and there's no other reason why a hearing should take place.

The fact that the defendant has submitted a witness statement late would not normally be a reason why summary judgment should be given, that would be for you to argue that the defendant in breach of a court order shouldn't be entitled to rely on their evidence.

For points 2, 3 and 4, it is possible that a judge may grant summary judgment on the basis that you have credible evidence to disprove what the defendant is seeking to rely on and the judge would need to explain why he/she does not believe the evidence of the defendant.

Bear in mind that if the dispute is considered complex or otherwise requires the use of expert evidence, it is unlikely that summary judgment will be appropriate (but that's the risk you take). Unfortunately, there is no way we can tell you whether your application would be successful because you've only given us a highlight of your case and it is really down to a judge to decide whether you've crossed the threshold of being entitled to summary judgment and disposing of the claim sooner than later.

Getting summary judgment also depends on how well you present your case.

On a sidenote, making multiple threads about the same query in different areas of the forum is not going to get a faster response, and may result in your posts not being looked at altogether.

[Rookie2021]

Thanks Rob. Do you think it’s still on to proceed with an application this late on anyway and would it affect any hearing the court may have rescheduled? I couldn’t post too much as there is so much information surrounding this case it would be hard to get it in a short description.

With the other posts, I realised I may have posted them in the wrong forum before finding this one. I’m new to the site and only signed up yesterday. If you know how I can delete the other two, guidance would be appreciated.

[R0b]

Well, you can do but I'm wondering what benefit it serves? You'll still have to wait for an available judge and have to pay a £255 application fee for the privilege. It's even possible that the summary judgment application could be heard on the same day immediately before the trial.