Default judgment and Joint&several liability

[CPRconfused]

Hi everyone,

I would be grateful for your thoughts on what appears to be a simple procedural issue which however has me stumped and does not seem to be spelled out under the CPR documentation.

I have made a breach of contract claim against a company that sold me something (D1) and included the bank (D2) which issued the credit card that I used for the purchase as per the usual s.75 provisions. The claim is for about £3k, so definitely eligible for the small claims track. (Additional background info: I'm a litigant in person, reasonably confident in my understanding of how contract law operates as I work in HR, but rather clueless about the procedural side of things)

D1 decided to have a go at defending the claim, but D2 failed to file a defence/acknowledgement of service, so I applied for a default judgment against D2 which was duly issued. As the default judgment against D2 was issued a day after D1 filed its defence, I have now received a directions questionnaire on the basis of that defence. My understanding is that the defendants are jointly and severally liable, so it seems rather pointless to proceed with a court hearing involving D1 when I can just collect the money from D2.

What should I do with the directions questionnaire, and are there any additional steps that I should take in these circumstances?

Many thanks for any help!

[R0b]

It is correct that the card provider is jointly and severally liable, but what that means is you have a right to claim against D2 or D1 or both (which you have in done in this instance).

CPR 12.8(1) allows a claimant to enter default judgment against one of the defendants but also note CPR 12.8(2) that says a court will only give default judgment if the claim can be dealt with separately to from the claim against the other defendants.

Not sure this is the case here if it's a s.75 claim but to answer your question, you may want to have a read of the case Page v Champion Financial Management Ltd (link here) which considered this exact point. Short answer is that a default judgment against one defendant does not preclude the other from advancing their defence. A number of reasons was given and one of them being that it would be unfair for the rest of the defendants to be bound by the non-compliant defendant.