UKCPS claim dismissed. Judge rules signage is 'gibberish'

A0QZ7658 UKCPS v Mr X (04/07/2014 Bradford) Claim dismissed. Signage was gibberish.

In a hearing this Friday UKCPS scarcely lasted  longer than 5 minutes. The judge criticised their lengthy and rambling claim; it was a scattergun of arguments against possible reasons the defence may raise, most of which had nothing to do with the actual defence submitted . He explained that the ParkingEye v Beavis case quoted by the Claimant had gone to appeal. Steve Hall, acting for the claimant, tried to correct the judge on this point, but the judge was having none of it. The judge then referred to the signage as gibberish and dismissed the claim. Mr X, the defendant, did not have to say a word.

Afterwards Steve Hall tried to laugh off the loss, saying you win some and lose some and telling Mr X he was lucky as the signage has now been changed. However, it appears from this post on moneysavingexpert regarding a different case that UKCPS are somewhat experts on losing cases due to bad signage.

Last Wednesday I was taken to court by UKCPS for not paying £100 fine, for parking in the wrong place in a free car park. I hadn't paid the fine (the amount of which kept altering) because I felt very strongly that it was unreasonable to demand so much money when I was not aware of having done anything wrong.

The judge found that the signs, although large had too much information on them to make them easy to read and ordered that signs should be put up which made it clear that although it was a free car park, penalties could apply. The UKPCS man said that this had already been done, although after I had got my parking ticket. 

The Prankster helped Mr X with his defence, pointing out the misspellings in the signage, and also that according to the terms and conditions the only people allowed to park in the entire car park are disabled drivers parking in a disabled bay with a badge showing. Non-disabled motorists are not allowed to park at all, anywhere in the car park.

The signage also displayed terms conflicting with other signs in the car park.

Lastly, the fact that a charge would be applied was hidden in the small print, which is not allowed by the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster