Joining four county court claims into one

[Peter Reynolds]

I have issued four county court claims as each invoice became overdue. It makes sense now to combine all into one as the issues are all the same. I have asked the defendant to consent to this but they have not replied. I can find nothing about this in the CPR, nor via Google. Any advice on how to draft this application would be very welcome.

[R0b]

Re: Joining four county court claims into one

Hi Peter,

Any reason why you have issued 4 separate claims? Are they under the same contract or separate contracts? Your situation is similar to what is known as Joinder where a number of parties may be joined together by the court to hear the same or similar issues in question.

My other question is whether there is any reason why you have not terminated the contract if they have failed to pay the invoices. Not that you have to terminate the contract but it is unusual for one to continue the contract if there has been a failure to pay on time and the innocent party knows that to be the case.

Either way you will need to make an application to Court to join the claims together however the issue of fees might arise if the sums go over a certain sum of money and the correct fees have not been paid for. This is considered sometimes an abuse of process whereby you might pay fees for the claim and then join them together without paying any further fees. The standard application form is N244 which you will need to use and fees are £255.