Won case today, but now they will go after my wife...help

[starsky3567]

Hi everyone

I'm new here. My wife parked on a PPL carpark in Birmingham in 2019, she tried to pay but the machine was not working. She then left the car park and eventually made payment over the phone, whilst she was away. She returned to find a PCN on the car. She ignored this and then they sent notice to the keeper, which was me demanding £100. I asked her to deal with it, and she appealed the ticket and admitted being the driver.

The claimant refused to accept her details as the driver and ignored the appeal (which included a photo showing the machine was not working), stating the transfer of liability needs to be completed and sent back. This was sent back after the 28 days notice, via email and postage ( after 2 years the postage receipt was lost). They did not reply and then 17 months later, as the keeper I received a letter of claim from D***, stating I owed £160 as the keeper and failing to provide the driver details with in 28 days as per POFA S.4.

I enlisted the help of an online useless s**t, claiming to deal with parking appeals, sending an email to D*** denying liability as the driver had appealed and they had the transfer of liability sent. They wrote back again citing the 28 day rule had been breached and I was therefore liable. They then issued proceedings against me and the useless s**t did a copy and paste of the defence from here and sent it to the courts. He also changed the address for documents to be served to a different address. I therefore never received or heard back from anyone on the case.

Last week received D***'s trial bundle and evidence directly from them ( they went to town on this, it covered every point from signage, CRA, Beavis case, maps, plans and photos etc.) They were claiming £183.

I tried calling the s**t to find out why he hadn't told me and how was I supposed to defend this, as the deadline for sending statements had passed and we had less than a week to trial today. He had ceased trading and said just turn up and the judge will decide based on the defence summary he had sent, which i have seen on here ( can't believe i paid a very small fee to him for this). I didn't trust his line of reasoning.

Anyway, i went to the online court today with no evidence or statement and the judge allowed me to give an oral account. I used the evidence in the D*** bundle to argue the case.

I had prepared and argued the keeper was not liable, as they had details of the driver by her own admission prior to commencing legal proceedings. D*** had included her emails in relation to this in the bundle and also included all their evidence of signage, the notice to keeper etc. They did not include a copy of the original PCN.

I also argued the original PCN was not POFA complaint and had been deliberately omitted from the file, inappropriate signage, CRA 2015, unfair contract terms from CMA37, excessive charges with the addition of extra charges and parking already been paid by phone. I also argued their T&C's were not fair as the ticket was issued for failing to display a valid parking ticket, but this T&C was impossible to meet with a payment over the phone, therefore the ticket was not issued correctly. They argued I was liable, as i had not sent in the transfer of liability within 28 days.

The judge dismissed the case on the grounds that Section 5 (2) had not been met, as D*** had the driver details before the issuing of proceedings and the transfer of liability did not need to be completed, as the driver information can be provided in any format.

I would like to thank D*** for sending me the bundle with all their evidence, as without this I would not have known about the court date nor had access to the emails, as I did not have a trial bundle prepared.

However, the judge did not comment on any of the other arguments I raised as he stated he did not want to prejudice any future claim against any party...i.e my wife, who 2 years ago admitted she was the driver.

How can I stop them from claiming against my wife now?

[ostell]

You can't stop them but you have already given some defence points that will be of use

[R0b]

Although Ostell is generally the expert on parking tickets, I am going to disagree with him on this one. I think you stand a decent chance of arguing that PPL are prevented from bringing a second claim, known as Res Judicata. It is a principle that prevents a party from re-litigating the same issue again, including third parties who are "privies". A privy is someone who has a legal or beneficial interest in the underlying claim.

The well known Henderson v Henderson case should come to your aid. The court decided that:

... the Court requires the parties to that litigation to bring forward their whole case, and will not (except under special circumstances) permit the same parties to open the same subject of litigation in respect of matter which might have been brought forward as part of the subject in contest, but which was not brought forward, only because they have, from negligence, inadvertence, or even accident, omitted part of their case. The plea of res judicata applies, except in special cases, not only to points upon which the Court was actually required by the parties to form an opinion and pronounce a judgment, but to every point which properly belonged to the subject of litigation, and which the parties, exercising reasonable diligence, might have brought forward at the time

In terms of whether you are a privy to proceedings, the Court of Appeal case Resolution Chemicals v H Lundbeck helps define this:

... in my judgment a court which has the task of assessing whether there is privity of interest between a new party and a party to previous proceedings needs to examine (a) the extent to which the new party had an interest in the subject matter of the previous action; (b) the extent to which the new party can be said to be, in reality, the party to the original proceedings by reason of his relationship with that party; and (c) against this background to ask whether it is just that the new party should be bound by the outcome of the previous litigation.

Using both of these case, your wife's defence (or part of it) is essentially that PPL were on notice that your wife was driving the car at the time of the alleged incident. It chose to ignore that information and proceeded to issue a claim against you as the registered keeper. The court dismissed the claim on the basis that you discharged your duties by identifying the driver. PPL are now seeking to bring a second claim against your wife for the same cause of action, pertaining to the same facts as before. Applying the rule in Henderson v Henderson, PPL had knowledge of the driver before it issued a claim, and they should have issued against your wife, or could have joined your wife as a defendant to proceedings but it did not. Rather they wilfully chose to pursue you and you alone. They cannot now decide to issue a claim against your wife simply because they did not like the outcome of the first judgment.

[ostell]

I defer to your knowledge. While I realise that it would be for the same event I thought the the change in defendant would be sufficient. Hope they don't try but hopefully if they do those cases you gave should be a defence

[starsky3567]

Thanks both especially you Rob. That makes complete sense and hopefully they will not try to submit the claim again against my wife.