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Man I am so absolutely righteously indignant right now…
My case against the pharmaceutical company was struck out today.
The details…
HISTORY
I made Data Protection Report requests in September 2012 and March 2013 following three trials with this company. Both were ignored.
I filed my claim for travel expenses and lost revenue due to the company messing me around so much (changed their minds four times re: whether I could do a trial with them) in February this year, after exhausting their complaints procedure.
Solicitors told me to withdraw my claim in five days or they would make an application for strike out and costs of £1,500.
They made their application. Was scheduled for a hearing in June. Court orders were for them to arrange a telephone conference. I sent my phone number as ordered. They refused point blank to answer my DPA request, and namely my request for my previous study agreements, until after the hearing.
They mucked up organising the telephone hearing so I was not contacted on the day. The Court chose to adjourn the hearing during the actual hearing, and no order for costs was made.
I work abroad. I had already planned to be home in July and August for a final hearing, but this application hearing pushed back that timetable, which now meant I needed to be around in the UK October/November, should the application hearing be dismissed.
Following the botched application hearing, the very next day, I booked travel to Central America for mid-November. Then I was told that the hearing had been adjourned and was scheduled for the end of August! I was flabbergasted. I would NOT be in the UK for any final hearing.
Was then sent my study agreements, but not a full DSAR, despite further requests. Attended the second hearing, and the Judge identified a possible breach of contract claim based on the study agreements, and ordered me to amend my claim. Obviously, my original claim could not have established a breach of contract as the Defendant had refused to send my study agreements to me. The Judge also told me that if I wanted to include a breach of DPA, I had to make a further application to amend the claim. Finally, I had a Summary Judgement claim scheduled for after the strike out application, which was dismissed immediately due to “my hopelessly particularised POC.”
I sent my amended claim in time, and the Court immediately set a date for the final hearing – December 13th, without sending direction questionnaires to be completed, and strongly advised both sides to enter into mediation. These orders were sent October 9th.
The final part of the Court order regarded asking to “amend/vary the order within 7 days.”
Within 7 days I called the Court and asked about attending via telephone conference as I was probably going to be away (there was still a chance that I would change my dates if I could afford to and so be present in person). I was told to put my request in writing. No mention that it would maybe not be possible, no mention of asking for adjournment, etc. I was basically led to believe it was a formality and I just had to gain the Court’s permission.
I emailed the Court the same day to ask for this , but having deleted the emails from my Inbox due to storage issues, cannot find said email.
16th October I emailed the Court’s mediation service to ask for mediation to be sought with the other side.
I emailed the mediation service several times more in the interim. The Defendant sent their Defence by the stated deadline, and I pursued them directly, to ask about the Court’s mediation service, sending four emails. I asked them for an answer one way or the other, by the end of October, and was told that they would not use the Court’s mediation service. They also turned down the opportunity to enter into without prejudice discussions, or to use an ADR.
I was home early November, and I spoke to the Court manager directly about attending by telephone as I was now sure to be away. She said she would chase it up. I made sure she knew how urgent it was, and also, still no mention of the option of asking for an adjournment.
It was only now that Direction Questionnaires were sent out. I filled mine in and returned it, stating the hearing date had already been scheduled in the space asking for info on difficult dates. At this point I still thought that I could attend by telephone.
It took the Court’s a further week and several more emails chasing a response to this question, before I was told to make the request via a letter, and possibly having to make an application. I sent a letter immediately. It took another week for a response stating the case was not suitable for a telephone conference, and I then discovered the Court staff should not have been asking me to put any requests in writing as the final hearing can never be attended by telephone! Why they misinformed me for so long is beyond me.
This answer came on November 25th. I had been pursuing said answer/request to attend by telephone for over six weeks, and can certainly show that it took the Court almost three weeks to give me an answer.
This email also included the first time the Court told me about how to seek to have the case heard due to non-attendance (i.e. giving 7 days notice), or how to ask for an adjournment. The trial date was December 13th, this email was sent 18 days before, and my evidence was due to be sent to the other side four days later for the hearing.
As my non-attendance was ill-advised, I made an immediate request for Summary Judgement (my case is very strong vs. a very weak Defence) which was turned down on the 27th November. I also got my evidence bundle to the other side in time.
I was told on the 29th November that I had had my hearing on the 13th December scheduled for a telephone conference. I was very happy about this, and figured that this exception to the rules was made in order to ensure that no more time was wasted and given my unique set of circumstances (i.e. in my application for adjournment, I had pointed out that I TWICE arranged to be back in the UK when a final hearing would have taken place, had it not been for the first botched strike out application hearing, and then the adjournment of said hearing which was subsequently dismissed). The Judge ordered the other side to arrange the hearing/pay for it. I sent my contact number for the 13th December. I was in Nicaragua.
They Defendant’s were also late with their evidence bundle (after 6pm the day it was due), which caused me huge problems printing it out and in the end I lost two days because of this. Further more, they submitted a second Witness Statement from the lead person I had been dealing with in the medical testing company, a week after all evidence was due. This second statement meant it because absolutely necessary for me to call him as a witness.
Four days before the adjournment hearing I found out that the telephone conference was actually for this hearing, and not the final hearing. I sent my contact number for the 9th to the Defendant. I was in Mexico on this date.
Of note here is that the other side were not sent the application for adjournment, as the space on the form asking who else needed to be informed of the hearing led me to believe the other side would therefore receive my application directly from the Courts. Having only found out about the hearing four days beforehand, I set about preparing all my reasons for adjournment to be presented verbally, as I could not possibly present them by the two day deadline I had been given to send out to the Court and the Defendant. I had six pages of reasons. These included the late submissions by the defendant, my need to call the staff member from the company as a witness, my not being present in person (due to the two previous application hearings pushing things back by six months), the six weeks it took the Court to answer my request about attending the hearing by telephone, the late request for the directions questionnaires to be completed, my need to make the DPA breach part of the claim (the Information Commissioner’s Office had sent me letter on the 4th December to state that the company had made multiple breaches of the DPA), and also, I pointed out that the Defendant’s had been granted an adjournment the day of their first application hearing after they mucked up, without any requests for such being made to me, as I was not there BECAUSE of their mistakes!
In particular, I pointed out that the parties were not on an equal footing, justice had to be served, and the only time wasted thus far was the result of the Defendant, and not me, as I had endeavoured to use mediation, ADR’s, etc, to avoid this needing to go to a final hearing, as well as trying to get it dealt with Summarily.
And finally, given my constant contact with the Court, and the fact I was Litigant In Person, going up against a top London law firm, I considered I had acted pretty well/admirably up to this point.
THE ADJOURNMENT HEARING:
I was there by the phone in my Mexican hostel ten minutes before I was due to be contacted. I was confident I would be awarded an adjournment until I returned to the country next year.
The Defendant had sent me two emails. The first one only told me to “take note of the dial-in number below” suggesting I needed to dial in to the conference. The second one stated “the teleconferencing company will aim to call you 7 to 10 minutes before the hearing.” Both emails contained an email forwarded from the teleconferencing company meant only for the chairperson. One particular part of the forwarded email reads “The Operator will contact you for this call” before listing phone numbers, and it naturally read to me that I should be waiting for the call at least ten minutes before 10:05am on Monday morning – i.e. 3:55am Mexican time.
And I was waiting. There was only one other person around when I got up at 3:45 and went down to the hostel garden/lounge/reception area to wait for this call. He wrote me a witness statement and here it is:
1. I was working night shift in the hostel on 9th December when Drew appeared. I don’t know exactly what time, but it was around 4am. He wasn’t in a rush. He told me he was waiting for a call from the UK, and needed to use the office phone. He had told me earlier about this so I said it fine.
2. About fifteen minutes later he came back and asked if he could call the UK. He told me it would be for a half hour. I told him no because we need to have the owners permission to make such an expensive call and that wasn’t what he had told us earlier. I knew the call was important but he did say they would call him at an exact time and he never said he would have to call them with our phone. I asked what happened to his call, he said “they f***ed it up.” He asked me to answer the phone if it rang.
3. About a minute later the phone started ringing. I went to get it but it stopped. I went to find Drew. He was coming out of his room. We went back downstairs and heard the phone ringing again, but it stopped before we got to it. The two calls were one minute apart maximum.
4. Drew waited in reception for fifteen minutes, using his laptop. He was angry and said that the other side had “made a massive mistake.”
5. Drew has stayed with us for 3 weeks now and I consider his character to be exemplary.
Between 3:50 and 4:02am no call occurred. I panicked. Reading the initial email from the Defendant, and the forwarded email from the teleconferencing company, I saw a part which reads: “Conference Call Type is: Operator Assisted
1. In the 10 minutes prior to the call's start time, call the Dial-In Number listed in the Conference Information section below.
2. Provide the Operator with the Conference ID Number.”
followed by a part which read “The Operator will contact you for this call.”
One of the chosen features for the call was ‘Roll Call.” Three minutes before the conference was due to start, with no call to my Mexican number, this contradiction only made sense to me if the Defendant had misrepresented what would happen in their second email, making a mistake. “The operator will call you” was part of the roll call, and I had to call the dial-in number, as instructed above, to be part of the call.
I tried to call out from the hostel phone, but was not able – the hostel has a special code they use to dial out, I discovered later, to protect them from guests using the phone unauthorised.
So put yourself in my position. You are faced with a company that has already failed to follow Court directions once and mucked up a previous teleconference hearing. You are faced with two contradictory emails from the solicitor acting for the defendant, one telling you to dial-in, another telling you to wait to be contacted 7 to 10 minutes beforehand, and also an email that they have forwarded from the teleconferencing company themselves which contains contradictory instructions unless read in one way only – which is that you need to dial-in to the service/operator, before a roll call takes place to introduce you to the teleconference. Finally, 3 minutes before the hearing is due to start, there has been no call, despite the solicitor for the Defendant telling you the call would come 7 to 10 minutes before, what would you think?
I think my actions were understandable. I asked for permission to use the hostel phone and was denied. I went to my room, got my headphones, and then the hostel employee came to get me. I called the dial-in number a dozen times, sometimes getting through, having a lady answer twice, but the internet in this hostel is terrible and using Skype is almost impossible. The Court staff will testify to that.
I have proof of all my attempted Skype calls.
I also have an email from the teleconferencing company, to show that, contrary to their trying to call me between 10 and 7 minute before the hearing, they called two minutes before the hearing, and tried once more 6 seconds before the hearing. Then they tried two minutes afterwards, to a completely wrong number. They then tried twice more to the old number I had sent them, over the following twelve minutes, before finally calling the Court/Judge, fifteen minutes late for the hearing – without me present. They basically tried my designated number twice, two minutes apart, at the beginning of a seventeen minute window, and then spent the remaining fourteen minutes of this window dialling numbers I could not be contacted on. Complete farce. The Defendant, by the way, gave them the alternative number to try.
Twenty minutes after trying to sort this mess out. I went back to bed, but didn’t sleep much, I was that angry.
I called the Defendant solicitor the next day, but the line was too bad to talk properly, but on calling again immediately several times afterwards it went straight through to the Solicitor’s voicemail.
I spoke to someone from the teleconferencing company later that day. He told me that the email sent to me from the Defendant would only have made sense to them and should not have been forwarded to the participants without due explanation, not least because it was for the chairperson of the call. He was of the opinion that the information in the emails was certainly contradictory and confusing, so no wonder the call did not go smoothly.
I could not believe that the Courts then ordered my adjournment application to be dismissed and costs against me!
To my mind this had been a combination of faults, namely, the Defendant’s maladministration and the Court’s sloppiness. I know I have done almost everything I could reasonably be expected to do, as a Litigant in Person, and I know that I have a case against this company which can only be fairly contested in person, especially against a top London law firm, which no doubt contributed to the orders made on the 9th. As it is, I did not have the time to make my case via letter before the final hearing today, because of non-attendance, nor would I have been within the 7 day time limit, nor did I think I should be asked to.
I was crazily busy since Monday, only sending the Court an application to overturn the orders of last Monday late yesterday/Thursday afternoon – including all the above reasons. This application was apparently taken up for the hearing of this morning/today. I just found out a few hours ago that all applications I have made were dismissed, and the case struck out, with no order as to costs. What is most infuriating is not knowing why and what happened in the damn hearing. I suspect my not being in time/in attendance/following procedures were the reason, no doubt pointed out by the Defendant. I didn’t send the last app to the other side. As far as I am concerned they can go and jump off a cliff. They are now going to have to deal with a major mess and a complete tyrant.
Obviously, I am absolutely F’ing fuming. If ever the other side made a stupid move it was this – I am now hellbent on holding them responsible and seeing my day in Court.
What are my options people? I am already getting my appeal sorted. I need your collective advice on this please?
Further, I need to know my rights about complaint about the Judiciary, about what I can do with regard to escalating my claim through the UK Courts and the EU Courts, and making my claim again, including asking permission to do so from the Court directly in a new claim?
As a final note, for anyone who thinks my anger is going to be a hindrance, I have to disagree. I think I am so determined now that the other side is not going to know what hit them.
Put yourself in my position for a moment - having waited almost a year for my day in Court, I am unable to attend Court for a final hearing because the other side pushed back matters six months, by A) firstly mucking up their original strike out hearing to take place by telephone, and yet somehow being allowed to have the matter adjourned DURING the hearing, without consulting me, and having NO order made as to costs, and then B) having their subsequent second application dismissed, both events of which made it impossible for me to attend the hearing last Friday because whereas I was in the country for four of the last six months when I could have attended and indeed planned to, the other side delayed proceedings too much, and further, were allowed to. Can you imagine how galling and infuriating it is to discover that the other side, following their actions which have for a second time led to a botched teleconferencing hearing which excluded me, has, in contrast to the way they were treated after the first botched hearing last June, been given the advantage by having my application being thrown out of Court, costs awarded against me, and any chance of a final fair hearing, which should have gone ahead months ago, shot to nothing? It is a travesty. Any maladministration on my part is down to being LIP and having no time to do things properly.do research, etc.
Help me get justice people!
My case against the pharmaceutical company was struck out today.
The details…
HISTORY
I made Data Protection Report requests in September 2012 and March 2013 following three trials with this company. Both were ignored.
I filed my claim for travel expenses and lost revenue due to the company messing me around so much (changed their minds four times re: whether I could do a trial with them) in February this year, after exhausting their complaints procedure.
Solicitors told me to withdraw my claim in five days or they would make an application for strike out and costs of £1,500.
They made their application. Was scheduled for a hearing in June. Court orders were for them to arrange a telephone conference. I sent my phone number as ordered. They refused point blank to answer my DPA request, and namely my request for my previous study agreements, until after the hearing.
They mucked up organising the telephone hearing so I was not contacted on the day. The Court chose to adjourn the hearing during the actual hearing, and no order for costs was made.
I work abroad. I had already planned to be home in July and August for a final hearing, but this application hearing pushed back that timetable, which now meant I needed to be around in the UK October/November, should the application hearing be dismissed.
Following the botched application hearing, the very next day, I booked travel to Central America for mid-November. Then I was told that the hearing had been adjourned and was scheduled for the end of August! I was flabbergasted. I would NOT be in the UK for any final hearing.
Was then sent my study agreements, but not a full DSAR, despite further requests. Attended the second hearing, and the Judge identified a possible breach of contract claim based on the study agreements, and ordered me to amend my claim. Obviously, my original claim could not have established a breach of contract as the Defendant had refused to send my study agreements to me. The Judge also told me that if I wanted to include a breach of DPA, I had to make a further application to amend the claim. Finally, I had a Summary Judgement claim scheduled for after the strike out application, which was dismissed immediately due to “my hopelessly particularised POC.”
I sent my amended claim in time, and the Court immediately set a date for the final hearing – December 13th, without sending direction questionnaires to be completed, and strongly advised both sides to enter into mediation. These orders were sent October 9th.
The final part of the Court order regarded asking to “amend/vary the order within 7 days.”
Within 7 days I called the Court and asked about attending via telephone conference as I was probably going to be away (there was still a chance that I would change my dates if I could afford to and so be present in person). I was told to put my request in writing. No mention that it would maybe not be possible, no mention of asking for adjournment, etc. I was basically led to believe it was a formality and I just had to gain the Court’s permission.
I emailed the Court the same day to ask for this , but having deleted the emails from my Inbox due to storage issues, cannot find said email.
16th October I emailed the Court’s mediation service to ask for mediation to be sought with the other side.
I emailed the mediation service several times more in the interim. The Defendant sent their Defence by the stated deadline, and I pursued them directly, to ask about the Court’s mediation service, sending four emails. I asked them for an answer one way or the other, by the end of October, and was told that they would not use the Court’s mediation service. They also turned down the opportunity to enter into without prejudice discussions, or to use an ADR.
I was home early November, and I spoke to the Court manager directly about attending by telephone as I was now sure to be away. She said she would chase it up. I made sure she knew how urgent it was, and also, still no mention of the option of asking for an adjournment.
It was only now that Direction Questionnaires were sent out. I filled mine in and returned it, stating the hearing date had already been scheduled in the space asking for info on difficult dates. At this point I still thought that I could attend by telephone.
It took the Court’s a further week and several more emails chasing a response to this question, before I was told to make the request via a letter, and possibly having to make an application. I sent a letter immediately. It took another week for a response stating the case was not suitable for a telephone conference, and I then discovered the Court staff should not have been asking me to put any requests in writing as the final hearing can never be attended by telephone! Why they misinformed me for so long is beyond me.
This answer came on November 25th. I had been pursuing said answer/request to attend by telephone for over six weeks, and can certainly show that it took the Court almost three weeks to give me an answer.
This email also included the first time the Court told me about how to seek to have the case heard due to non-attendance (i.e. giving 7 days notice), or how to ask for an adjournment. The trial date was December 13th, this email was sent 18 days before, and my evidence was due to be sent to the other side four days later for the hearing.
As my non-attendance was ill-advised, I made an immediate request for Summary Judgement (my case is very strong vs. a very weak Defence) which was turned down on the 27th November. I also got my evidence bundle to the other side in time.
I was told on the 29th November that I had had my hearing on the 13th December scheduled for a telephone conference. I was very happy about this, and figured that this exception to the rules was made in order to ensure that no more time was wasted and given my unique set of circumstances (i.e. in my application for adjournment, I had pointed out that I TWICE arranged to be back in the UK when a final hearing would have taken place, had it not been for the first botched strike out application hearing, and then the adjournment of said hearing which was subsequently dismissed). The Judge ordered the other side to arrange the hearing/pay for it. I sent my contact number for the 13th December. I was in Nicaragua.
They Defendant’s were also late with their evidence bundle (after 6pm the day it was due), which caused me huge problems printing it out and in the end I lost two days because of this. Further more, they submitted a second Witness Statement from the lead person I had been dealing with in the medical testing company, a week after all evidence was due. This second statement meant it because absolutely necessary for me to call him as a witness.
Four days before the adjournment hearing I found out that the telephone conference was actually for this hearing, and not the final hearing. I sent my contact number for the 9th to the Defendant. I was in Mexico on this date.
Of note here is that the other side were not sent the application for adjournment, as the space on the form asking who else needed to be informed of the hearing led me to believe the other side would therefore receive my application directly from the Courts. Having only found out about the hearing four days beforehand, I set about preparing all my reasons for adjournment to be presented verbally, as I could not possibly present them by the two day deadline I had been given to send out to the Court and the Defendant. I had six pages of reasons. These included the late submissions by the defendant, my need to call the staff member from the company as a witness, my not being present in person (due to the two previous application hearings pushing things back by six months), the six weeks it took the Court to answer my request about attending the hearing by telephone, the late request for the directions questionnaires to be completed, my need to make the DPA breach part of the claim (the Information Commissioner’s Office had sent me letter on the 4th December to state that the company had made multiple breaches of the DPA), and also, I pointed out that the Defendant’s had been granted an adjournment the day of their first application hearing after they mucked up, without any requests for such being made to me, as I was not there BECAUSE of their mistakes!
In particular, I pointed out that the parties were not on an equal footing, justice had to be served, and the only time wasted thus far was the result of the Defendant, and not me, as I had endeavoured to use mediation, ADR’s, etc, to avoid this needing to go to a final hearing, as well as trying to get it dealt with Summarily.
And finally, given my constant contact with the Court, and the fact I was Litigant In Person, going up against a top London law firm, I considered I had acted pretty well/admirably up to this point.
THE ADJOURNMENT HEARING:
I was there by the phone in my Mexican hostel ten minutes before I was due to be contacted. I was confident I would be awarded an adjournment until I returned to the country next year.
The Defendant had sent me two emails. The first one only told me to “take note of the dial-in number below” suggesting I needed to dial in to the conference. The second one stated “the teleconferencing company will aim to call you 7 to 10 minutes before the hearing.” Both emails contained an email forwarded from the teleconferencing company meant only for the chairperson. One particular part of the forwarded email reads “The Operator will contact you for this call” before listing phone numbers, and it naturally read to me that I should be waiting for the call at least ten minutes before 10:05am on Monday morning – i.e. 3:55am Mexican time.
And I was waiting. There was only one other person around when I got up at 3:45 and went down to the hostel garden/lounge/reception area to wait for this call. He wrote me a witness statement and here it is:
1. I was working night shift in the hostel on 9th December when Drew appeared. I don’t know exactly what time, but it was around 4am. He wasn’t in a rush. He told me he was waiting for a call from the UK, and needed to use the office phone. He had told me earlier about this so I said it fine.
2. About fifteen minutes later he came back and asked if he could call the UK. He told me it would be for a half hour. I told him no because we need to have the owners permission to make such an expensive call and that wasn’t what he had told us earlier. I knew the call was important but he did say they would call him at an exact time and he never said he would have to call them with our phone. I asked what happened to his call, he said “they f***ed it up.” He asked me to answer the phone if it rang.
3. About a minute later the phone started ringing. I went to get it but it stopped. I went to find Drew. He was coming out of his room. We went back downstairs and heard the phone ringing again, but it stopped before we got to it. The two calls were one minute apart maximum.
4. Drew waited in reception for fifteen minutes, using his laptop. He was angry and said that the other side had “made a massive mistake.”
5. Drew has stayed with us for 3 weeks now and I consider his character to be exemplary.
Between 3:50 and 4:02am no call occurred. I panicked. Reading the initial email from the Defendant, and the forwarded email from the teleconferencing company, I saw a part which reads: “Conference Call Type is: Operator Assisted
1. In the 10 minutes prior to the call's start time, call the Dial-In Number listed in the Conference Information section below.
2. Provide the Operator with the Conference ID Number.”
followed by a part which read “The Operator will contact you for this call.”
One of the chosen features for the call was ‘Roll Call.” Three minutes before the conference was due to start, with no call to my Mexican number, this contradiction only made sense to me if the Defendant had misrepresented what would happen in their second email, making a mistake. “The operator will call you” was part of the roll call, and I had to call the dial-in number, as instructed above, to be part of the call.
I tried to call out from the hostel phone, but was not able – the hostel has a special code they use to dial out, I discovered later, to protect them from guests using the phone unauthorised.
So put yourself in my position. You are faced with a company that has already failed to follow Court directions once and mucked up a previous teleconference hearing. You are faced with two contradictory emails from the solicitor acting for the defendant, one telling you to dial-in, another telling you to wait to be contacted 7 to 10 minutes beforehand, and also an email that they have forwarded from the teleconferencing company themselves which contains contradictory instructions unless read in one way only – which is that you need to dial-in to the service/operator, before a roll call takes place to introduce you to the teleconference. Finally, 3 minutes before the hearing is due to start, there has been no call, despite the solicitor for the Defendant telling you the call would come 7 to 10 minutes before, what would you think?
I think my actions were understandable. I asked for permission to use the hostel phone and was denied. I went to my room, got my headphones, and then the hostel employee came to get me. I called the dial-in number a dozen times, sometimes getting through, having a lady answer twice, but the internet in this hostel is terrible and using Skype is almost impossible. The Court staff will testify to that.
I have proof of all my attempted Skype calls.
I also have an email from the teleconferencing company, to show that, contrary to their trying to call me between 10 and 7 minute before the hearing, they called two minutes before the hearing, and tried once more 6 seconds before the hearing. Then they tried two minutes afterwards, to a completely wrong number. They then tried twice more to the old number I had sent them, over the following twelve minutes, before finally calling the Court/Judge, fifteen minutes late for the hearing – without me present. They basically tried my designated number twice, two minutes apart, at the beginning of a seventeen minute window, and then spent the remaining fourteen minutes of this window dialling numbers I could not be contacted on. Complete farce. The Defendant, by the way, gave them the alternative number to try.
Twenty minutes after trying to sort this mess out. I went back to bed, but didn’t sleep much, I was that angry.
I called the Defendant solicitor the next day, but the line was too bad to talk properly, but on calling again immediately several times afterwards it went straight through to the Solicitor’s voicemail.
I spoke to someone from the teleconferencing company later that day. He told me that the email sent to me from the Defendant would only have made sense to them and should not have been forwarded to the participants without due explanation, not least because it was for the chairperson of the call. He was of the opinion that the information in the emails was certainly contradictory and confusing, so no wonder the call did not go smoothly.
I could not believe that the Courts then ordered my adjournment application to be dismissed and costs against me!
To my mind this had been a combination of faults, namely, the Defendant’s maladministration and the Court’s sloppiness. I know I have done almost everything I could reasonably be expected to do, as a Litigant in Person, and I know that I have a case against this company which can only be fairly contested in person, especially against a top London law firm, which no doubt contributed to the orders made on the 9th. As it is, I did not have the time to make my case via letter before the final hearing today, because of non-attendance, nor would I have been within the 7 day time limit, nor did I think I should be asked to.
I was crazily busy since Monday, only sending the Court an application to overturn the orders of last Monday late yesterday/Thursday afternoon – including all the above reasons. This application was apparently taken up for the hearing of this morning/today. I just found out a few hours ago that all applications I have made were dismissed, and the case struck out, with no order as to costs. What is most infuriating is not knowing why and what happened in the damn hearing. I suspect my not being in time/in attendance/following procedures were the reason, no doubt pointed out by the Defendant. I didn’t send the last app to the other side. As far as I am concerned they can go and jump off a cliff. They are now going to have to deal with a major mess and a complete tyrant.
Obviously, I am absolutely F’ing fuming. If ever the other side made a stupid move it was this – I am now hellbent on holding them responsible and seeing my day in Court.
What are my options people? I am already getting my appeal sorted. I need your collective advice on this please?
Further, I need to know my rights about complaint about the Judiciary, about what I can do with regard to escalating my claim through the UK Courts and the EU Courts, and making my claim again, including asking permission to do so from the Court directly in a new claim?
As a final note, for anyone who thinks my anger is going to be a hindrance, I have to disagree. I think I am so determined now that the other side is not going to know what hit them.
Put yourself in my position for a moment - having waited almost a year for my day in Court, I am unable to attend Court for a final hearing because the other side pushed back matters six months, by A) firstly mucking up their original strike out hearing to take place by telephone, and yet somehow being allowed to have the matter adjourned DURING the hearing, without consulting me, and having NO order made as to costs, and then B) having their subsequent second application dismissed, both events of which made it impossible for me to attend the hearing last Friday because whereas I was in the country for four of the last six months when I could have attended and indeed planned to, the other side delayed proceedings too much, and further, were allowed to. Can you imagine how galling and infuriating it is to discover that the other side, following their actions which have for a second time led to a botched teleconferencing hearing which excluded me, has, in contrast to the way they were treated after the first botched hearing last June, been given the advantage by having my application being thrown out of Court, costs awarded against me, and any chance of a final fair hearing, which should have gone ahead months ago, shot to nothing? It is a travesty. Any maladministration on my part is down to being LIP and having no time to do things properly.do research, etc.
Help me get justice people!
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