Access to justice in the UK is mostly a pipe dream for the ordinary person

[heisenberg]

You find difficulties accessing justice boring? Do you believe in a just society? If not, what are you doing in this forum? How about you contribute something meaningful as opposed to snide remarks?

Ah, no response.

[atticus]

In 38 minutes on a sunny Sunday afternoon?* I must be a disappointment to you.


*slightly quicker than your more than 4 months between posts before today.

[heisenberg]

In 38 minutes on a sunny Sunday afternoon?* I must be a disappointment to you.


*slightly quicker than your more than 4 months between posts before today.

Still no response to my questions, funny that. Seems snide remarks are all you are capable of recently.

[PallasAthena]

You find difficulties accessing justice boring? Do you believe in a just society? If not, what are you doing in this forum? How about you contribute something meaningful as opposed to snide remarks?

This isn't a campaigning site Heisenberg, we advise on the law as it is. Other sites are available if you want to petition for a change in the law.

[Pezza54]

I have had one experience of a court claim and would not relish another one. It took about 18 months on the small claims track from filing the claim to the date set for final hearing
When eventually the paper claim was transferred to the county court, all papers were mislaid and I had to send the county court a second copy of everything
When i enclosed the copy of the documents with a letter I asked for an acknowledgement. I never received an acknowledgement and 5 weeks later the judge ordered a stay of the claim due to missing documents. I had to phone the court to point out their error and a court date was quickly arranged
Early in the case the defendant obtained court approval to add a counterclaim against a second defendant. 8 months later the counterclaim had not been served. The defendant's solicitor was allowed to get away with this

[heisenberg]

This isn't a campaigning site Heisenberg, we advise on the law as it is. Other sites are available if you want to petition for a change in the law.

Thanks for the post.

I don't think it is appropriate to try and censor threads that are well within the forum rules, and that raise legitimate and serious concerns regarding the legal system, no matter how much you disagree with the subject matter.

[heisenberg]

I have had one experience of a court claim and would not relish another one. It took about 18 months on the small claims track from filing the claim to the date set for final hearing
When eventually the paper claim was transferred to the county court, all papers were mislaid and I had to send the county court a second copy of everything
When i enclosed the copy of the documents with a letter I asked for an acknowledgement. I never received an acknowledgement and 5 weeks later the judge ordered a stay of the claim due to missing documents. I had to phone the court to point out their error and a court date was quickly arranged
Early in the case the defendant obtained court approval to add a counterclaim against a second defendant. 8 months later the counterclaim had not been served. The defendant's solicitor was allowed to get away with this

That doesn't surprise me at all sadly, and can imagine how stressful and onerous that must have been. Goodness knows how many mistakes are being made that aren't being detected.

I recall the court service refusing to accept the claim forms that I sent them because they overlooked the EX160 form that I also enclosed (I received the claims forms back stating that I had not paid the court fee, by which point the claim was out of time). I complained, received a response, then escalated my complaint never to receive a response. Needless to say, all that, amongst the other problems that I have encountered, doesn't fill me with confidence, and when stakes are so incredibly high it certainly deters you from issuing proceedings.

[PallasAthena]

I don't think it is appropriate to try and censor threads that are well within the forum rules, and that raise legitimate and serious concerns regarding the legal system, no matter how much you disagree with the subject matter.

I agree, you should not attempt to censor. Fortunately no-one here has been censored.

[pc52straw]

This is a fascinating thread, and actually rather than people getting snotty about these things, HMCTS has been bugged for years by its own reports into its own service giving it the wooden spoon.

Recent experiences and observations in courts near me over the couple of years:

First - A garage owner used an N244 over seven months into proceedings to argue the claim against him was filed to the wrong name, and the judge just went "sure, that sounds reasonable" and signed it off. Obvious questions, like "why didn't you say that in your response to the claim?", weren't asked at all. But even worse was, the application was fraudulent. Basically, the crook's argument was that Bodgit Garages didn't exist anymore, when it was clearly still open, clearly still trading as that, still using all the same paperwork as before, and even still had Mr Bodgit selling people's cars when they'd only been taken in for an MOT!

A ten year old could've debunked that cowboy's application in half an hour without paying a penny. So, what's the court's excuse for running up costs and wasting six months and still managing to get their decision completely wrong?

Second - A defendant moving house had a post office redirect and contacted the court, and was told yes, everything can be done by email with notifications. We all know that the County Courts often insist on doing everything by post even when it's been asked explicitly for a very good reason to USE THE EMAIL ADDRESS for anything time-sensitive AND has agreed to do that. The defendant in this case was given five working days to respond to a letter that got posted a week after the judge drafted it... and the letter took sixteen days to arrive. The faff involved in fixing things was probably 100x as expensive in time, costs and material terms, as emailing the thing would've been.

Third - one county court I know has ONE person at the front desk answering ONE phone line for ALL enquiries... and they still insist that you have only two ways to pay them. Go there in person, or pay over the phone. Either way, you're trapped because you have to wait for that one person to be available.

After 60 phone calls, someone I know gave up trying to pay over the phone and was tearing their hair out... because they live over 200 miles away from that court. They ended up sending a family friend who lives 30 miles away to go round, queue up, and pay by card at the front desk. That is utterly bonkers. These days you can pay your odd job man by BACS or online, or pay the other party to the claim by BACS or online. There's no excuse for the courts to be partying like it's 1992. Aside from anything else, if you could pay by modern methods, that one person would actually be freed up to deal with enquiries, instead of being bogged down doing card payments over the phone.

Fourth - Claimant asks a Court asked to confirm its instructions due to total vagueness on its written correspondence; its reply is "we don't give out legal advice." After getting bupkis in terms of clarification from anywhere, the claimant follows the general rules, only for the judge to then rollock them for not doing something that is not in any documented instruction anywhere. Guys - FFS, this is a totally unrepresented LiP in a Low Value Small Claim chasing a couple of hundred quid only, who's been told repeatedly to act like a layman - so how the heck is he supposed to know about some arcane bit of bollocks that's totally disproportionate to the claim at hand? Telepathy?

Fifth - and this one REALLY boils my piss. When a district judge who's apparently been teleported from 18th century Massachusetts is told the defendant has a profound neurological disorder that requires reasonable adjustments, and their reply is in effect "mental illness is no excuse." I nearly fell off my chair when I heard a judge say exactly that in the courtroom. If I said anything HALF as bad as that in MY day job, I'd be in a disciplinary process.

[heisenberg]

This is a fascinating thread, and actually rather than people getting snotty about these things, HMCTS has been bugged for years by its own reports into its own service giving it the wooden spoon.

Recent experiences and observations in courts near me over the couple of years:

First - A garage owner used an N244 over seven months into proceedings to argue the claim against him was filed to the wrong name, and the judge just went "sure, that sounds reasonable" and signed it off. Obvious questions, like "why didn't you say that in your response to the claim?", weren't asked at all. But even worse was, the application was fraudulent. Basically, the crook's argument was that Bodgit Garages didn't exist anymore, when it was clearly still open, clearly still trading as that, still using all the same paperwork as before, and even still had Mr Bodgit selling people's cars when they'd only been taken in for an MOT!

A ten year old could've debunked that cowboy's application in half an hour without paying a penny. So, what's the court's excuse for running up costs and wasting six months and still managing to get their decision completely wrong?

Second - A defendant moving house had a post office redirect and contacted the court, and was told yes, everything can be done by email with notifications. We all know that the County Courts often insist on doing everything by post even when it's been asked explicitly for a very good reason to USE THE EMAIL ADDRESS for anything time-sensitive AND has agreed to do that. The defendant in this case was given five working days to respond to a letter that got posted a week after the judge drafted it... and the letter took sixteen days to arrive. The faff involved in fixing things was probably 100x as expensive in time, costs and material terms, as emailing the thing would've been.

Third - one county court I know has ONE person at the front desk answering ONE phone line for ALL enquiries... and they still insist that you have only two ways to pay them. Go there in person, or pay over the phone. Either way, you're trapped because you have to wait for that one person to be available.

After 60 phone calls, someone I know gave up trying to pay over the phone and was tearing their hair out... because they live over 200 miles away from that court. They ended up sending a family friend who lives 30 miles away to go round, queue up, and pay by card at the front desk. That is utterly bonkers. These days you can pay your odd job man by BACS or online, or pay the other party to the claim by BACS or online. There's no excuse for the courts to be partying like it's 1992. Aside from anything else, if you could pay by modern methods, that one person would actually be freed up to deal with enquiries, instead of being bogged down doing card payments over the phone.

Fourth - Claimant asks a Court asked to confirm its instructions due to total vagueness on its written correspondence; its reply is "we don't give out legal advice." After getting bupkis in terms of clarification from anywhere, the claimant follows the general rules, only for the judge to then rollock them for not doing something that is not in any documented instruction anywhere. Guys - FFS, this is a totally unrepresented LiP in a Low Value Small Claim chasing a couple of hundred quid only, who's been told repeatedly to act like a layman - so how the heck is he supposed to know about some arcane bit of bollocks that's totally disproportionate to the claim at hand? Telepathy?

Fifth - and this one REALLY boils my piss. When a district judge who's apparently been teleported from 18th century Massachusetts is told the defendant has a profound neurological disorder that requires reasonable adjustments, and their reply is in effect "mental illness is no excuse." I nearly fell off my chair when I heard a judge say exactly that in the courtroom. If I said anything HALF as bad as that in MY day job, I'd be in a disciplinary process.

Bloody hell, that's bad!

How did you come to know about case 1?

What reasonable adjustments adjustments was the person in case 5 asking for?

Looks like some judges are actually getting drunk whilst in court:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...-figures-show/

[pc52straw]

When going to Small Claims myself, I took the advice of going to observe the courts a bit too seriously and went about 5 times to one combined court, and 3 times to another one. I didn't just sit in the claims hearings, I sat in the preceding hearings.

The one thing surprising me about example 1 is that some district judges appear to expect a total novice to have to go to absurd lengths to pierce a corporate veil where none really exists - for example when they're suing a local trader small business for a couple of hundred quid, the invoices say one thing, the signature block says something else, the website talks about a limited company but that's literally the only place that mentions it, etc.

As for case 5 - I can't go into the specifics. But the judge was talking as if there's no difference between someone having a lifelong disability that is covered by The Equality Act (2010) where the cognitive impairment merits proper safeguarding, and someone pulling a less than credible "mental health" excuse for why the dog ate their homework.

If you want an analogy of how it came across to me - look at what Ann Coulter said about Gus Walz (the non-verbal autistic son of the US Democrats' vice presidential nominee) in a deleted tweet recently. Fortunately, this district judge was not in a hearing with that individual present - the judge said it while talking to a proxy (maybe a solicitor or some other advocate.)

All in all, most of what I've seen at courts that annoyed me is actually really simple stuff to fix and as OCMC evolves we can expect digital workflow and structured document management to solve inefficiencies like courts insisting on posting letters out in hard copy while ignoring instructions to send digitally, and not providing modern payment options. But I have a very low tolerance for folks whose mindset comes across as if they're a 1970s PE teacher complaining about how the kids with azz-ma are unteachable, feeble and just not trying hard enough.