DEAL. Claiming costs from them.

[Bradford1956]

DEAL have not paid their hearing fee. To quote from the Notice to Pay Fee sent to them and me, " If my 5/3 you have not paid the fee your claim will be automatically struck out without further order of the court and you will be liable for the costs which the defendant has incurred".
Has anyone gone down this route of claiming costs? Is it worth it? Would they pay up? My local court office say to write to them with my costs. Is there an hourly rate I should be thinking of, have spent a lot of time thinking and worrying about all this.
Thanks.

[mystery1]

Re: DEAL. Claiming costs from them.

I believe some have but with limited success however from the wording of the order which specifically awards cost i'd say you're already 1 up.

"CPR r.38.6 states that the claimant is liable for the defendant's costs after discontinuance (r.38.6(1)) but that this does not apply to claims allocated to the small claims track (r.38.6(3)). However, the white book states (annotation 38.6.1): "Note that the normal rule as to costs does not apply if a claimant in a case allocated to the small claims track serves a notice of discontinuance although it might be contended that costs should be awarded if a party has behaved unreasonably (r.27.14(2)(d))." r.27.14(2)(d) this should actually be g rather than d but you can't alter the quote but should highlight it for the court.

You need to make a case for unreasonable behaviour which will include such things as lies, not paying the hearing fee, no, or incompatible, pre action protocols etc etc

Lip rates are £18 per hour.

M1

[Bradford1956]

Re: DEAL. Claiming costs from them.

Thanks mystery1 for that information.
I have just noticed on my Companies House app that DEAL is listed as a Dormant Company under the heading of Nature of Business code 99999. From what I can understand of the definition is that no significant transactions are allowed, cant employ anyone. Quite interesting really !!