CCJ letter from Northampton am feeling pretty desperate

[Sukicat]

I spoke to Claims Group in 2013 on the phone and by email and asked about their services. I was not aware that I had signed any documentation with Claims Group. After this initial contact, they started besieging me with paperwork to sign, which I did not sign.

I rang my mortgage provider NRAM myself in 2013 and asked them to look into a policy that I signed with them with my mortgage. It took me some months and calls but eventually, they paid me £2890.72 in November
2013. I dispute that Claims Group provided a service to me for this compensation, as I had to do the work to get my claim sorted. Sometime after I was compensated, Claims Group, sent a demand for payment. At
the same time they also sent me fresh copies of their contract to sign. When I received these, I did not sign the contract and felt they were pressuring me to make payment to them, even though they had not done anything to help me with this claim. Their letters to sign their contracts were often sent as the same time as the demand. I tried to call them and explain that I had dealt with NRAM myself. They ignored my call and intermittently sent me a demand along with the contract.
For some years after 2014, I heard no more. I am not sure if I have the papers now.

I then received a request for a CCJ from Moriarty Law for 1429.43. I did not get get their letters in August and October because I have been with family during an illness and not always at home.

I am afraid that I have had to contact Moriarty to offer payment to them of £100 a month but this is out of fear. I work in an industry where I could lose my job for having a CCJ and I am extremely fearful. I would like
Moriarty to show me proof of this contract and to dispute the services of Claims Group in providing the service they are claiming from me.

Any thoughts on what i should do, please.

[Amethyst]

Have you received a formal claim issued by the court ? If so can you type the particulars of claim out and give the date of issue from the claim form pls. Is the Claimant 'Claims Group' and the address for documents ' Moriarty Law' ?

When did you offer payment to Moriarty and on what basis - any written agreement to keep the claim on hold etc ?

Send a Subject Access Request Letter to Claims Group now as well, and also possibly NRAM asking specifically for any communications / third party authorisations received from / sent to Claims Group.

There's a few Claims Groups about, so if you have the address, website or authorisation number it would help us know what you're dealing with.

[Sukicat]

Thank you very much for responding. The original company was Claims Advisory Group Adamson House, Pomona Strand, Stretford, Manchester M16 0TT. The Law firm on the CCJ claim is Moriarty Law 15 Old Bailey London EC4M 7EF. It says:

The defendant owes the claimant £1184.00 under a written agreement with Claims Advisory Group dated 29/06/2013 which was assigned to the claimant on 10/08/2018 and notice of which was given to the defendant on 08/10/2018 (debt). Despite formal demand for payment of the debt the defendant has failed to pay and the claimant claims £1184.66 and the claimant also claims interest pursuant to section 69 of the County Court 1984 limited to one year to the date hereoff at the rate of 8% per annum amounting to £94.77.

I sent Moriarty an email in a panic last night saying that a CCJ would affect my job and offered them £100 a month. I said that i wanted them to send me the documents. I have acknowledged it on the Court website saying I want to defend. I attached the information that I put on the original al post. I have probably done the wrong thing but I was in an absolute panic last night.

[Sukicat]

The Northampton Claim form is dated 4th Jan 2018. Oh the address for the claimant Moriarty is also Merlingen Investments Ground Floor, Rosemount House, Rosemount Avenue West Byfleet KT14 6LB.

[Amethyst]

Claims Advisory Group's MOJ Authorisation was cancelled in July last year which is likely why the debt book has been bought over by Merlingen. The company is still active on companies house so still send the SAR to them -

11 Oct 2018

Registered office address changed from Adamson House Pomona Strand Old Trafford Manchester M16 0TT England to Unit 4, the Foundry Ordsall Lane Salford Manchester M5 3LW on 11 October 2018

So £2890.72 was your refund from NRAM - so 39% plus VAT would be 1352.84 or 39% inc VAT would be 1127.37 - they're claiming 1184.66 so presumably there's some kind of interest/late payment fee added. By the by really though as you don't believe you entered into an agreement with CAG in the first place.

Check through your email history around the time they claim you signed up with them as well... some companies send a link to do an electronic signature and misrepresent what it is for. Presumably CAG must have had some form of authority for NRAM to have informed CAG of the refund, so you really want to get a copy of what NRAM rely on for having dicussed your account with CAG - unless you told CAG of the refund? Potentially a complaint there under data protection.

Would you be able to post a copy of what you did send to Moriarty in a panic - just to check it can't be used as an admission/offer to pay if they send that to the court. You might want to withdraw that offer if so and say to them you first require the documents.

The defendant owes the claimant £1184.00 under a written agreement with Claims Advisory Group dated 29/06/2013 which was assigned to the claimant on 10/08/2018 and notice of which was given to the defendant on 08/10/2018 (debt). Despite formal demand for payment of the debt the defendant has failed to pay and the claimant claims £1184.66 and the claimant also claims interest pursuant to section 69 of the County Court 1984 limited to one year to the date hereoff at the rate of 8% per annum amounting to £94.77.

Not a great deal of info there about the debt is there so Merlingen will have to do a fair bit of work to evidence their claim.

[Sukicat]

I will ask for proof from Merlingen and CAG as you suggest and contact NRAM. Whaf are my options if i did sign? At the time this was going on i was in a breakup and not firing on all cylinders.

I am not sure who you are but you have helped me a lot, thank you.

[Sukicat]

Well, today I am starting to fire on all cylinders, which I was not doing last night (blind panic). Any thought on letters and Defence?:

1) Defence (I am going to speak to the Court tomorrow about substituting this defence)

1.The Defendant received the claim xxx dated 4^th January 2019 from the Northampton County Court on 8^th January 2018.

2. Each and every allegation in the Claimants statement of case is denied unless specifically admitted in this Defence.

3. This claim relates to a PPI claims agreement with Claims Advisory Group. This Group no longer operates as a Claims Group after its Ministry of Justice licence to was removed in November 2018.

4. The Claimants statement of case fails to give adequate information to enable me to properly assess my position with regards the claim.

5. The Claimant’s Particulars of Claim states the agreement was entered into on 29/06/2013 but no documentation has been provided.

6. The Claimants statement of case states that the account was assigned from Claims Advisory Group to Merlingen Investment Ltd on 10/08/18. The Defendant does not recall receiving notice of this assignment or formal demand.

7. On the 9^th January 2019, The Defendant sent a request for inspection of documents mentioned in the claimant’s statement of case under Civil Procedure Rule 31.14 to Moriarty Law. I requested the Claimant provide copies of the Agreement, Default Notice and Notice of Assignment.

8. Upon requesting this from the Claimant’s legal advisors Moriarty Law, their website has a standard reply that says replies will not be provided for at least 7 days (attached). As time is of the essence, further time is required to examine these documents.

9. On the 9^th January 2019, The Defendant sent a formal request for a copy of the original agreement to Claims Advisory Group.

10. The Defendant requests an extension of the time period allowed for filing of a full defence pending receipt of documents (as allowed under CPR 15.5)

11.The Defendant respectfully requests the court orders the Claimants to provide the necessary documentation in order for the Defendant to fully plead her case else the Claim should stand struck out.

12. Under Civil Procedure Rule 16.5 (4) Where the claim includes a money claim, a defendant shall be taken to require that any allegation relating to the amount of money claimed be proved unless he expressly admits the allegation. Therefore, it is expected that the Claimant be required to prove the allegation that the money is owed as claimed.

13. In the event that the relevant documents are received from the Claimant, the Defendant will then be in a position to amend her defence, and would ask that the Claimants bear the costs of the amendment.

14. It is denied that the Claimant is entitled to the relief as claimed or at all.
Statement of Truth

The Defendant believes that the facts stated in this Defence are true.


Signed ________________________________

Dated ________________________________


Appendices:
1.Email and automatic response from Moriarty Law
2.Letter requesting paperwork from Moriarty Law (plus certificate of posting)
3.Letter Requesting paperwork from Claims Advisory Group (plus certificate of posting)

2) Email to Moriarty

Dear Sir/ Madam

Please can you supply me with the documents and proof of the debt with

Claims Advisory Group and the assignment to you. I contacted you very

late last night to offer you payment of £100 a month. I was extremely

fearful about losing my job and a CCJ is reason to remove me from my

position. I wish to retract that offer, as it was made out of fear. I

do wish to see the paperwork, as I am not sure that I did have an

agreement with CAG and this is the first opportunity I have had to

speak to you (I did not get your previous letter).

I will send a separate letter to CAG to obtain their records as well.

I can see that their Ministry of Justice Licence was removed last year

and I have their new registered address.

I will send copies to Northampton County Court and ask them to hold the

case until I can see these and will be in touch soon. Please can you

confirm receipt of this request and send me the details.

Your Sincerely

Dear Sir / Madam,

Thank you for your email.

Unfortunately we are experiencing a high volume of emails and as such it may take as many as 7 days to receive our response.

We apologise for this inconvenience and wish to assure that you that we are working to respond to all emails at the earliest opportunity.

In the meantime, to ensure your query can be dealt with as quickly as possible, we would politely request that you do confirm for us the following pieces of information, as required by Data Protection:

1. Full name;
2. Date of birth;
3. First line of your address and post code.

Please further note that by responding with such information, you are giving your consent for us to communicate with you via this email address and for the information discussed via email to be shared with our client where appropriate.

If you do not feel you are able to communicate with us via email, or would rather communicate via telephone conversation, please phone 020 3126 4544 between our openings hours of 9:00 – 17:30, Monday to Thursday, 9:00 to 17:00 on Fridays, or 09:00 – 13:00 Saturdays.

We politely request that you include your unique 5 – 6 digit reference number in all future communications with ourselves.

Thank you.

Yours faithfully,
Moriarty Law Ltd
Moriarty Law Limited
Email: admin@moriartylaw.co.uk


2) SAR to NRAM
On 04/01/2019I received a County Court claim from Claims Advisory Group. The case relates to my PPI claim paid in November 2013. I do wish to defend this claim but need to see any authority and correspondence between you and CAG.

I spoke to you to complete this claim and deal with my case. Do you have any of the call logs, letters or correspondence to me, please.

It is pretty urgent given it relates to a claim. I know there is a 30 day limit for a SAR but would appreciate all you could find, at your earliest convenience.

3) Letter to Moriarty
Claim Number: xxx

Request for documents mentioned in a statement of case under CPR 31.14

On 04/01/2019I received a County Court claim from yourselves of which I have acknowledged receipt indicating my intention to defend in full. To enable me to file my defence, I require inspection of documents you mention in your statement of case such as:

1. Agreement
2. Assignment
3. Formal Demand

I am entitled to see the documents on which you as rely and which you must produce at trial. You should ensure compliance with your CPR 31 duties and ensure that the document(s) I have requested are copied to and received by me within 7 days of receiving this letter.

If you require more time in which to comply with this request you must tell me in writing and confirm your agreement to an extension of the time allowed for me to file my full defence as allowed under CPR 15.5, so I may notify the court.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely


4) Letter to CAG

Dear Sirs,

Claim Number: xxx

Request for documents mentioned in a statement of case under CPR 31.14

On 04/01/2019I received a County Court claim from your assignee, Merlingen Investments Ltd of which I have acknowledged receipt indicating my intention to defend in full. To enable me to file my defence, I require inspection of documents you mentioned the statement of case such as:

1. Agreement
2. Assignment
3. Formal Demand

I am entitled to see the documents which your assignee must produce at trial. You should ensure compliance with your CPR 31 duties and ensure that the document(s) I have requested are copied to and received by me within 7 days of receiving this letter.

If you require more time in which to comply with this request you must tell me in writing and confirm your agreement to an extension of the time allowed for me to file my full defence as allowed under CPR 15.5, so I may notify the court.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

[Amethyst]

I will ask for proof from Merlingen and CAG as you suggest and contact NRAM. Whaf are my options if i did sign? At the time this was going on i was in a breakup and not firing on all cylinders.

I am not sure who you are but you have helped me a lot, thank you.

If you did sign then the sum claimed will possibly be owed, but once you have defended you will be in a better negotiating position IF they are able to evidence their claim. So could consider a reduced settlement offer for full & final, or instalments outside of court keeping the claim on hold so no CCJ is applied. Just submitting an offer to pay through court WILL give you a CCJ and instalment order, so you want to avoid doing that, and try negotiate an agreement outside of court. There's something called a Tomlin Order which means the claim is put on hold while you make the agreed payments, and only if you then defaulted would they be able to obtain the judgment.

When you put in your acknowledgement of service you didn't enter anything in the defence did you? or did you type something in there as well as ticking the 'intend to defend in full' box ? -

If you did just acknowledge the claim then you do have 33 days from the date of issue to file a defence so gather info first - that defence is a good start, although you haven't actually said 'I did not enter into an agreement with CAG' and that they did not obtain any PPI refund on your behalf or instruction from NRAM, There's possibly other things you can put in - if you can check your emails back to when they contacted you, there are rules on entering into contracts distance selling and information they need to have provided under Consumer Contracts regs and MOJ claims Management rules, so we can expand on that side of things once we have more information.


On the letters … 4) Letter to CAG isn't needed - they no longer own the debt so it is only the SAR to them.

Have you sent the email to Moriarty? ( letter 2 ) - I'm assuming you have as you have posted the auto response.?

[Sukicat]

I did enter a defence and it is that I need to amend with Northampton Court tomorrow and withdraw and just stick with the acknowledgement till I get a better defence document and see exactly what they send me.

Yes, I sent the email to Moriarty and wanted to follow up with the formal letter to them with proof of posting.

I will change CAG to a SAR.

I am so scared at the moment. I spoke to my mortgage company about taking a one month holiday, which they agreed. That is about £1000. Still not enough if they insist on all of it.

Once again, thank you.

[Sukicat]

I helped someone on another thread on employment. Try to give back:-) What a great forum, thank you.

[Sukicat]

I have added some more to the Defence and will speak to the Court this morning about updating my defence when it is ready:

4. The defendant did not obtain any PPI refund on my behalf or instruction from NRAM, as the defendant was already dealing with this directly with NRAM herself at the time of their contact with the defendant.

5. Claims Advisory Group have not complied with their obligations under the Ministry of Justice Rules in dealing with the defendant and it is noted that the Ministry of Justice cancelled their licence on 25/07/2018. None of the following rules were followed by CAG as they repeatedly bombarded the defendant with contractual paperwork to sign and adopted high pressure selling tactics to text, call and write to the defendant over a number of years and when the defendant asked them to stop and returned multiple copies of their contracts unopened:

“send you emails or texts (unless you’ve agreed to receive them) make marketing calls if you have told them that you don’t want to receive them or if you’ve registered your number with the Telephone Preference Service
use any form of high-pressure selling such as asking for on-the-spot decisions
They must:
give you clear written information about their service (including fees and costs) before you agree a contract
get your signature before taking any money or starting a claim
tell you clearly about ombudsman schemes or any other official ways you can claim
offer a 14-day cooling off period when you can cancel your contract without being charged” (Source Ministry of Justice https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-co...-as-a-consumer)

[Amethyst]

I helped someone on another thread on employment. Try to give back:-) What a great forum, thank you.

Perfect - thank you

[Amethyst]

I did enter a defence and it is that I need to amend with Northampton Court tomorrow and withdraw and just stick with the acknowledgement till I get a better defence document and see exactly what they send me.

Yes, I sent the email to Moriarty and wanted to follow up with the formal letter to them with proof of posting.

I will change CAG to a SAR.

I am so scared at the moment. I spoke to my mortgage company about taking a one month holiday, which they agreed. That is about £1000. Still not enough if they insist on all of it.

Once again, thank you.

Okay, you will need to do a formal application to amend your defence, but it can wait a while.... could you please post what you did enter as a defence please. You're in a panic, understandably, but you do need to take a little step back, give us all the info you can and get a plan and a decent idea of the process you need to follow to either successfuly defend the case or negotiate a settlement out of court. Don't rush things while you're panicking - and don't send any more emails/letters just yet till we've had a look at everything.

The application to amend will cost you either £100 or £255 depending if you get consent first, so don't rush into it. The court will send the defence you did enter to the claimant and then they have 28 days to respond to it, to the court saying if they wish to proceed. You can amend after that if needed, but first let's see what we're starting with and come up with a plan to get things sorted - you got that SAR letter off to NRAM didn't you ? and the CPR request off to Merlingen ? those will really help going forward.

The SAR to CAG you can send now, just keep it basic .... all information held -example Subject Access Request Letter

[Sukicat]

I will not send off any more , I promise. The defence was the wording that I started the email chain (first post above).

I spoke to the Northampton Court today and they sent me the forms to make an amended Defence - it will cost £100. They are sending off my papers to Moriarty today and will see what they say.

I have sent off the letters to CAG, Moriarty and NRAM.

As soon as I hear from the Court, I will post it.

Thank you.

[Amethyst]

So this is what you already have submitted ? ( I was reading it as this was what you wanted to amend it to )

Defence (I am going to speak to the Court tomorrow about substituting this defence)

1.The Defendant received the claim xxx dated 4^thJanuary 2019 from the Northampton County Court on 8^thJanuary 2018.

2. Each and every allegation in the Claimants statement of case is denied unless specifically admitted in this Defence.

3. This claim relates to a PPI claims agreement with Claims Advisory Group. This Group no longer operates as a Claims Group after its Ministry of Justice licence to was removed in November 2018.

4. The Claimants statement of case fails to give adequate information to enable me to properly assess my position with regards the claim.

5. The Claimant’s Particulars of Claim states the agreement was entered into on 29/06/2013 but no documentation has been provided.

6. The Claimants statement of case states that the account was assigned from Claims Advisory Group to Merlingen Investment Ltd on 10/08/18. The Defendant does not recall receiving notice of this assignment or formal demand.

7. On the 9^th January 2019, The Defendant sent a request for inspection of documents mentioned in the claimant’s statement of case under Civil Procedure Rule 31.14 to Moriarty Law. I requested the Claimant provide copies of the Agreement, Default Notice and Notice of Assignment.

8. Upon requesting this from the Claimant’s legal advisors Moriarty Law, their website has a standard reply that says replies will not be provided for at least 7 days (attached). As time is of the essence, further time is required to examine these documents.

9. On the 9^th January 2019, The Defendant sent a formal request for a copy of the original agreement to Claims Advisory Group.

10. The Defendant requests an extension of the time period allowed for filing of a full defence pending receipt of documents (as allowed under CPR 15.5)

11.The Defendant respectfully requests the court orders the Claimants to provide the necessary documentation in order for the Defendant to fully plead her case else the Claim should stand struck out.

12. Under Civil Procedure Rule 16.5 (4) Where the claim includes a money claim, a defendant shall be taken to require that any allegation relating to the amount of money claimed be proved unless he expressly admits the allegation. Therefore, it is expected that the Claimant be required to prove the allegation that the money is owed as claimed.

13. In the event that the relevant documents are received from the Claimant, the Defendant will then be in a position to amend her defence, and would ask that the Claimants bear the costs of the amendment.

14. It is denied that the Claimant is entitled to the relief as claimed or at all.
Statement of Truth

The Defendant believes that the facts stated in this Defence are true.


Signed ________________________________

Dated ________________________________