Small claims court - name misspelt/N244

[Spar90]

Hello,

I recently filed a claim against my ex who borrowed money off me under the agreement he would pay me back. He has failed to do so and got quite nasty when asked for it so I knew my only chance was to go via small claims court.

The claim cost me £80 to submit and is for a total of £1,370. Unfortunately I made an error when submitting the claim in that I put his double barrelled surname the wrong way round. That is the only error, everything else is correct.

I contacted OCMC to ask what I needed to do and they have sent a pretty generic response (5 weeks later) telling me to submit an N244 form to change the name. The cost for this is £108.

I am wondering if I can just submit the claim again from scratch with the correct details for £80 rather than spending more just to change the name?

The defendant failed to respond to the claim and it is currently sat with me being able to apply for an automatic judgement. I presume with his surname being the wrong way round, I should not do this?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[R0b]

Hi

Re-issuing another claim to avoid a fee is likely to be considered an abuse of process, which may result in both claims being struck out entirely, so whether you decide to go down this path is at your own risk.

Unfortunately, it is your mistake so you have to own the cost of rectifying it. Given that the court has suggested the fee of £108 then it sounds like they are saying you can do this by making a 'without notice' application, which essentially means they won't notify your ex about the application - I think this would be correct since it is a name change only.

I think you could also using the same application, request a default judgment at the same time, so you don't have to wait for the order to come through and then apply to the court for a default judgment after. You can then kill two birds with one stone, but you would need to make it clear in the application and the witness statement that this is what you want to do and explain why.

[Spar90]

Thank you Rob, that's really helpful