Small claim - case won

[Cpt Morgan]

Hi, I am looking for some advise.

After nearly 2 years I recently won my small claims case against my first builder. I won my initial hearing, but he has appealed and then requested to set aside the appeal decision which was to dismiss and strike out his appeal, and then the judge issued an order for an oral reexamination, which again the builder lost, so that is now that, no more appeals no more thinking up more lies to try and get out of his debt.

Now that is complete, during the initial build issue which was supposed to take 12 weeks, I was forced to seek a new builder and then obviously there was their own time to complete the build, including putting right what was incomplete and wrong from the first builder, and fitting me in around other work they had on. I was advised this would take along time but I needed to take what I could get as I had no options open to me given the builder was picking up someone else's work (if you can call it that).

My initial small claim was won on the basis that the builder was paid for material he never ordered. He then tried to hide behind his "ltd" status but his contract with me was with a false compnay name, leaving him personally liable. He introduced a criminal barrister friend to try and help, but I won, which is good news.

What I want to know now is if I can now start a new claim for the time I have had to rent a room in a property since the first builder failed to deliver my extension when he promised. The knock on impact to me has meant renting a room for over 12 months, and the lost enjoyment of my property into the bargain, which was an unknown when my small claim was initiated.

Can I legitimately start a new claim against the first builder for these points i.e. rent and lost enjoyment of my on home?

Thanks, in advance

[R0b]

You can try, but don't be surprised if you don't get very far on the basis that the dispute against your builder has already been determined and you can't expect the builder to keep having to defend multiple claims arising from the same issue - the legal principle is called res judicata.

If you didn't know how much to claim at the time, you should have either waited until you could determine that amount or you could issue a claim for an unspecified amount which meant that you would have to pay a fee of £10k for the privilege and the court will decide how long you might have to stay out of your home and what to award you.

If you decided not to bring those losses at the time of your claim then you don't get the opportunity to decide at a later date that you now want to claim those losses as that is an abuse of process in itself for trying to get around the fact that you shouldn't have to pay the proper £10k fee.

Long story short, yes you can submit a claim but equally the builder will have a defence that you should have brought those losses under the now determined claim.

[Cpt Morgan]

You can try, but don't be surprised if you don't get very far on the basis that the dispute against your builder has already been determined and you can't expect the builder to keep having to defend multiple claims arising from the same issue - the legal principle is called res judicata.

If you didn't know how much to claim at the time, you should have either waited until you could determine that amount or you could issue a claim for an unspecified amount which meant that you would have to pay a fee of £10k for the privilege and the court will decide how long you might have to stay out of your home and what to award you.

If you decided not to bring those losses at the time of your claim then you don't get the opportunity to decide at a later date that you now want to claim those losses as that is an abuse of process in itself for trying to get around the fact that you shouldn't have to pay the proper £10k fee.

Long story short, yes you can submit a claim but equally the builder will have a defence that you should have brought those losses under the now determined claim.

Thank you, that is what I thought might be the case. I guess my concern/question is that I didn't know what I didn't know at the time, so my initial claim was based on known facts re materials he didn't order, with rent being something that was completely unknown at the time. Given there is a 3 year time period for raising a claim , my options were limited as I literally had no idea how long I was going to need to wait for my building work to complete. It still isn't sorted some 2 years on, so it's not looking like even after 3 years this will be resolved. If I waited for more than 3 years I couldn't then raise my claim, so I was in a catch 22 situation.

[atticus]

The limitation period for claims for damages for breach of contract is not 3 years but 6.

Have all your various questions and threads been about this case in which you had already obtained judgement?

[R0b]

Thank you, that is what I thought might be the case. I guess my concern/question is that I didn't know what I didn't know at the time, so my initial claim was based on known facts re materials he didn't order, with rent being something that was completely unknown at the time. Given there is a 3 year time period for raising a claim , my options were limited as I literally had no idea how long I was going to need to wait for my building work to complete. It still isn't sorted some 2 years on, so it's not looking like even after 3 years this will be resolved. If I waited for more than 3 years I couldn't then raise my claim, so I was in a catch 22 situation.

That's why we have 'specified claims' i.e. fixed sum claims and 'unspecified claims' where the sum of money cannot be fixed but there may be a range of loss or damage you are seeking. For unspecified claims, you would ordinarily instruct an expert to assess the damage, what it would cost, how long to repair or rebuild etc. you then use that assessment from the expert to add any additional losses you want to recover and then in the claim form you would say something like, The Claimant expects to claim a sum for loss and damage between £150,000 and £200,000.

So there is a process to cover your unknown losses as at the time, it's just that it would cost you £10k upfront in fees which puts a lot of people off and why the choose to go down the specified claim route and seek a fixed sum of money. That's all well and good but as I said, you can't then keep tagging on claims for extra losses as you have already chosen your path unless you are prepared to risk your fresh claim being kicked out and potentially paying fees incurred by the other side.

[Cpt Morgan]

The limitation period for claims for damages for breach of contract is not 3 years but 6.

Have all your various questions and threads been about this case in which you had already obtained judgement?

Sadly no, I have 3 separate cases against 3 separate builders, there really should be changes to the law to stop their ongoing antics, but I can see the legal system benefits from these cases, so in essence why stop a lucrative market place?

[Cpt Morgan]

That's why we have 'specified claims' i.e. fixed sum claims and 'unspecified claims' where the sum of money cannot be fixed but there may be a range of loss or damage you are seeking. For unspecified claims, you would ordinarily instruct an expert to assess the damage, what it would cost, how long to repair or rebuild etc. you then use that assessment from the expert to add any additional losses you want to recover and then in the claim form you would say something like, The Claimant expects to claim a sum for loss and damage between £150,000 and £200,000.

So there is a process to cover your unknown losses as at the time, it's just that it would cost you £10k upfront in fees which puts a lot of people off and why the choose to go down the specified claim route and seek a fixed sum of money. That's all well and good but as I said, you can't then keep tagging on claims for extra losses as you have already chosen your path unless you are prepared to risk your fresh claim being kicked out and potentially paying fees incurred by the other side.

OK, I understand, I am going to go down the criminal route now then, as I have a VRR pending on the outcome of civil action, so given admissions in civil court whereby he has openly admitted to taking money for materials he never ordered, and given it has been proven 100% that his company (and associated contract) were fraudulent, I hope the CPS now have the "beyond reasonable doubt" requirements they need to pursue the VRR to a successful conclusion. I won't hold be breath though as to date the CPS have been useless.

[atticus]

What changes to the law would you like to see?

and what is a VRR?

[Cpt Morgan]

A Victims Right to Review.

Re law changes, many, but clearly something needs to be done to stop corrupt builders, and or company directors of failing companies simply closing down A and then opening B, only to do it all over again. The liquidators and IS need "more" powers to disqualify directors when they are clearly not assisting with insolvency, have submitted under value transactions for i.e. vehicles being transferred from business A to business B, and where they owe considerable sums to the HMRC for VAT and PAYE it should be a given that they are struck of as directors until these debts and any others are repaid.

[Cpt Morgan]

Re the situation re the 3 builders, just for some back ground.

Builder A has been given a criminal charge for malicious communications and fined. He still owes me money, but I don't have his home address or a forwarding address to begin a civil claim. I have written to The Property and Disclosures Team, to try and get this info as clearly the police have this as do the courts, but due to GDPR (which thwarts most things), it is proving extremely difficult to find this guys home address, so my hands are tied re issuing a civil claim until I have an address.

Builder B has lost his never ending attempts to deflect from the civil claim against and I have requested a charging order for the £10,000 he owes but has not paid. As part of the proceedings I identified another CCJ he has outstanding and as a result the civil judge reviewing the charging order has asked me to obtain the address of the CCJ owners. He suggested contacting the county courts, but as they are about as useless as a chocolate fire guard they have STILL not even bothered to reply, and have breached their own time lines for a response. My suspicion (Other than that they are to thick to know what they are doing), is that once again GDPR will thwart attempts to obtain this info, and if so I would have expected a judge to have known this would be the situation and not wasted more time to chase down the money I am owed. I can't find an address if its not possible to get this info, and it should not be down to me to find the owner of the other existing CCJ. If they wanted to also put a charging order on the builders home, they were perfectly at liberty to do so, but they haven't.

Builder C is being investigated by the IS, with support from the liquidator, under S216/S217 of the ISA. They owe over £500,000 in unpaid VAT and PAYE amongst other things, and have transferred vehicles to their new compnay massively under value, and transferred contracts at "nil" value which have all been contested by the liquidator, and the HMRC are chasing for the money owed. The company directors are now ignoring calls and emails from the liquidator, and I am pursuing my own legal action against them for numerous failures, including a failure to build the extension to building regulations and or structural engineering drawings, and for many other structural defects and failures to fix issues under warranty. The list of issues is too numerous to include here.

Just thought some back ground might help