Cabot Financial court claim

[Kingfisher]

Hi, I wonder if there is anyone who could provide me with some advice.

Yesterday, I received a Claim form from Cabot Financial through County Court Business Centre, Northampton. This is from a debt wih J D Williams. This is what the particulars of the claim state:

"By an agreement between J D Williams ("JDW") & the Defendant dated 18/05/2008 ("the agreement") JDW agreed to issue the Defendant with a credit account upon the terms & conditions set out therein. In breach of the Agreement the Defendant failed to make the minimum payments Due & the Agreement was terminated. The Agreement was assigned to the Claimant on 13/01/2012. The Claimant has compiled with Sections III & IV of Practice Direction - Pre-Action Conduct. The Claimant therefore claims: 1.574.44 "

The amount claimed is £574.44 plus court fee of £60 and Solicitor's costs £70 = £704.44

This is signed by the claimants solicitor's who are Mortimer Clarke Solicitors.

I have read some other posts in this forum about the 6 year statute, my question is do Cabot Financial have a right to claim this from me? Should I just agree a repayment plan with Cabot Financial? If I do, can Cabot set the rate at which they want it repaid?

Many thanks in advance

[Kafka]

Re: Cabot Financial court claim

The 6 years dates back to the last payment made, the last acknowledgement made or their 'cause of action' resulting from your defaulting. If the account only opened in May 2008 then its hardly possible for 6 years to have passed to render this statute barred.

Unfortunately the agreement dates after April 2007 when the law changed, and after that date it isn't possible to challenge the validity of the agreement in the same way - if it is flawed.

Can you tell us about the default process and the assignment? Are there charges added on to the account?

[Kingfisher]

Re: Cabot Financial court claim

Thanks for your reply Kafka

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the default process, I checked Noddle and it states that I defaulted on the agreement in 2009, to be honest I had forgotten about this debt it was such a long time ago.

The only charges that I know of are the ones they have added for this court claim, court and solicitors costs.

Regards

[Kafka]

Re: Cabot Financial court claim

Once you defaulted on the repayments, you should have been issued with a formal Default Notice containing the required details and giving you 14 days in which to correct the breach before the account was formally placed into default and registered as such. If they failed to do that all properly you have cause to defend on those grounds.

For the assignment, you should have been properly informed about the transfer of the account to Cabot.

You should also have received a formal Letter Before Action from Cabot or their solicitors giving you at least 14 days to respond before they filed at court.

All of these items are procedural and may give you arguments for defence, but to be honest they rarely provide you with grounds to dismiss a claim.

A defaulted account has normally been subject to lots of charges added on and those can be reclaimed with interest here, as a counterclaim, but they would only reduce the amount if you won, not stop the claim.

It may still be possible to make an arrangement with Cabot, even though that window tends to close once they have already filed at court. Another thing that's possible is to seek a Tomlin Order if you can't fight the claim. This effectively gives them the judgement, but it doesn't get filed as a CCJ, Instead, a Tomlin Order avoids a CCJ but has the court set a repayment amount and if you ever default on that arrangement then a CCJ follows. That's worth considering, because you can't plead Limitation and its after April 2007, so frankly you don't have a lot to fight with. Sorry that's not what you'd like to hear, but that's my take on this. Maybe someone else can add something?