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Hi Everyone
This is my first time on here.
Please can you give some help and advice? I will try to be brief but it has become quite complicated:
We are a small building company and we are in the process of claiming for payment of an outstanding invoice from one of our past customers.
In March 2018 we filed a claim in the English Courts for a sum not exceeding £10K. In July 2018 as we had not received anything from the court or the defendant we filed for a default judgement. Around the same time we were made aware that the defendant's first name was incorrect, he always uses his second name and we believed we had his first name correct at the time. We applied to have the name corrected and this was finally done earlier this year.
As we had heard nothing from the court after the correction regarding the judgement request I emailed them to ask where we were with it as we had still received no defence. We heard nothing after four weeks so I wrote again asking if they had received a defence and heard nothing back.
Several weeks ago the court issued form N149a – Allocation to Small Claims track stating that this was now a defended claim and we should complete form N180 – Directions Questionnare. (DQ)
I immediately rang the court and spoke to their Civil Section and told them again that we had not received a defence from the defendant and asked if they had. I was told that they had not. I was then told not to complete the DQ as we were not in a position to proceed and they would send the file back to the judge for directions on how to proceed and that I should wait until we heard further from them.
Today I received a letter from the court telling me that the defendant had written to the judge in September last year airing several grievances about the courts actions. A copy was enclose for us. In this letter he has told the court that he did not want to communicate directly with us as he did not want us to know his new address, in Scotland, and also accused us of harassment. (This is untrue as the only correspondence we have ever sent him is requesting payment of the invoice and asking him to tell us why he will not as we would be happy to sit down with him to try and clarify any queries and if necessary rectify them.) Within this letter he has also written his defence. This was clearly not picked up by anyone and to be fair it does just look like a letter to the judge and is not clearly shown as his defence.
The letter recieved today from the court was written on 3 July and our DQ was due to be filed no later than the 4 July so it is already overdue by one day through no fault of our own because we were waiting to hear from the court. We are told in the letter that following the resubmission to the judge for directions the judge has decided that the letter sent to the court in September is his defence and today therefore was our first sight of a copy of this letter/defence. The court told us in the letter received today (5 July) that I must get the DQ in by 4 July if there are not to be sanctions against us.
As I understand court procedure the Claimant normally has 14 days from receipt of the defence to file the DQ and through no fault of ours we have only just had sight of the defence. I think, not unreasonably in my view, that we would like a little time to consider what points the defendant has made. Surely the ‘clock should start ticking’ from the time we receive the defence as it would for anyone else. As it is Friday today the earliest I can contact the court is Monday. Does anyone have any experience of whether or not we will be granted an extension or at least acknowledge that it would be unreasonable to apply sanctions?
In the DQ we have from the defendant to us he says he wants the claim heard in the Scottish Courts. (We filed the claim in England). We are in the south of England so do not really want to travel to Scotland if it can be avoided but more importantly in the Scottish courts the maximum sum a claimant can make appears to be £5000 for what is termed a ‘simple case’. If the claim is heard in Scotland we would instantly loose £5k of our claim and we also are not as familiar with any quirks of the Scottish law governing our case. In the run up to us making the claim the defendant was clear that we should write to his old address as he still owns the property and it is also the address for all correspondence as shown at Companies House as he is the director or several companies. The court agreed at the time that the claim could be served at that address. The building work we carried out for the defendant was done in England.
I have been a little concerned very recently that we may have filed our claim in the wrong jurisdiction but now feel we are correct because apparently if the defendant had wished to challenge this he should have acknowledged service of the claim and sent in a form N9 to challenge jurisdiction and he has not done so.
So I have four questions:
1) Does anyone have any advice on how to approach the court on Monday morning about over running the court deadline of 4 July to submit the DQ?
2) Can I object to having the claim heard in Scotland, for the reason outlined above, and how do I go about this?
3) How do I get a Without Prejudice letter we sent to the defendant discussing an offer withdrawn by the defendant. ( A copy of said letter was sent to us along
with the N149A - Allocation to Small Claims Track)?
4) Can a witness statement be sent in prior to any hearing to challenge his allegations of harassment as we are very angry at this distortion of the facts?
Thank you for reading this and I look forward to any advice you can give.
This is my first time on here.
Please can you give some help and advice? I will try to be brief but it has become quite complicated:
We are a small building company and we are in the process of claiming for payment of an outstanding invoice from one of our past customers.
In March 2018 we filed a claim in the English Courts for a sum not exceeding £10K. In July 2018 as we had not received anything from the court or the defendant we filed for a default judgement. Around the same time we were made aware that the defendant's first name was incorrect, he always uses his second name and we believed we had his first name correct at the time. We applied to have the name corrected and this was finally done earlier this year.
As we had heard nothing from the court after the correction regarding the judgement request I emailed them to ask where we were with it as we had still received no defence. We heard nothing after four weeks so I wrote again asking if they had received a defence and heard nothing back.
Several weeks ago the court issued form N149a – Allocation to Small Claims track stating that this was now a defended claim and we should complete form N180 – Directions Questionnare. (DQ)
I immediately rang the court and spoke to their Civil Section and told them again that we had not received a defence from the defendant and asked if they had. I was told that they had not. I was then told not to complete the DQ as we were not in a position to proceed and they would send the file back to the judge for directions on how to proceed and that I should wait until we heard further from them.
Today I received a letter from the court telling me that the defendant had written to the judge in September last year airing several grievances about the courts actions. A copy was enclose for us. In this letter he has told the court that he did not want to communicate directly with us as he did not want us to know his new address, in Scotland, and also accused us of harassment. (This is untrue as the only correspondence we have ever sent him is requesting payment of the invoice and asking him to tell us why he will not as we would be happy to sit down with him to try and clarify any queries and if necessary rectify them.) Within this letter he has also written his defence. This was clearly not picked up by anyone and to be fair it does just look like a letter to the judge and is not clearly shown as his defence.
The letter recieved today from the court was written on 3 July and our DQ was due to be filed no later than the 4 July so it is already overdue by one day through no fault of our own because we were waiting to hear from the court. We are told in the letter that following the resubmission to the judge for directions the judge has decided that the letter sent to the court in September is his defence and today therefore was our first sight of a copy of this letter/defence. The court told us in the letter received today (5 July) that I must get the DQ in by 4 July if there are not to be sanctions against us.
As I understand court procedure the Claimant normally has 14 days from receipt of the defence to file the DQ and through no fault of ours we have only just had sight of the defence. I think, not unreasonably in my view, that we would like a little time to consider what points the defendant has made. Surely the ‘clock should start ticking’ from the time we receive the defence as it would for anyone else. As it is Friday today the earliest I can contact the court is Monday. Does anyone have any experience of whether or not we will be granted an extension or at least acknowledge that it would be unreasonable to apply sanctions?
In the DQ we have from the defendant to us he says he wants the claim heard in the Scottish Courts. (We filed the claim in England). We are in the south of England so do not really want to travel to Scotland if it can be avoided but more importantly in the Scottish courts the maximum sum a claimant can make appears to be £5000 for what is termed a ‘simple case’. If the claim is heard in Scotland we would instantly loose £5k of our claim and we also are not as familiar with any quirks of the Scottish law governing our case. In the run up to us making the claim the defendant was clear that we should write to his old address as he still owns the property and it is also the address for all correspondence as shown at Companies House as he is the director or several companies. The court agreed at the time that the claim could be served at that address. The building work we carried out for the defendant was done in England.
I have been a little concerned very recently that we may have filed our claim in the wrong jurisdiction but now feel we are correct because apparently if the defendant had wished to challenge this he should have acknowledged service of the claim and sent in a form N9 to challenge jurisdiction and he has not done so.
So I have four questions:
1) Does anyone have any advice on how to approach the court on Monday morning about over running the court deadline of 4 July to submit the DQ?
2) Can I object to having the claim heard in Scotland, for the reason outlined above, and how do I go about this?
3) How do I get a Without Prejudice letter we sent to the defendant discussing an offer withdrawn by the defendant. ( A copy of said letter was sent to us along
with the N149A - Allocation to Small Claims Track)?
4) Can a witness statement be sent in prior to any hearing to challenge his allegations of harassment as we are very angry at this distortion of the facts?
Thank you for reading this and I look forward to any advice you can give.
Last edited by Girl Friday; Today, 21:09:PM.
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