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Wednesday 1 March 2017

MIL lose set-aside hearing

MIL Collections v Ms B C8QZ44G7 set-aside hearing in front of  DJ Smith. 28/2/2017 Carlisle

Ms B contacted the Prankster because she discovered a CCJ had been lodged against her at a previous address. She had not lived there since February 2015. The claim did not provide much to go on. Ms B contacted MIL and spoke to an arrogant representative who told her that MIL Collections had purchased a disputed parking charge from North West Parking Enforcement from 2014, the CCJ was now with the bailiffs and that they were in the process of taking her to court for another ticket. He informed her that she had to pay £100 to stop the new court hearing, but refused to provide any details of what the charge was for.

This obviously worried Ms B who contacted The Prankster

The Prankster assisted her to advise of the process for requesting a set-aside of the judgement. MIL stated they would not contest the set-aside, as long as Ms B paid them all the money they wanted, and did not claim against them for the set-aside fee of £255. The Prankster pointed out that this did not appear to be a particularly good bargain, seeing as MIL had lost all reported cases. Ms B decided not to accept the offer and so MIL contested the set-aside. The Prankster provided a witness statement detailing the known problems with MIL's purported deed of assignment, the fact that these issues had been substantially dealt with by a judge in the same court, and the fact that MIL appeared to be recycling the same undated deed of assignment in multiple cases, claiming it had been assigned on different dates each time.

The Hearing

MIL Collections sent an advocate to the hearing. Ms B made contact and described him as a lovely old man. The hearing was an hour behind schedule and there was a previous MIL case. Ms B was unaware of the outcome. In the hearing it appeared that the set-aside form and witness statement were all that was necessary. DJ Smith hardly had a word to say to Ms B and instead concentrated on grilling MIL's advocate.

Ms B was initially worried about having to prove she would win any rehearing but Judge Smith stopped MIL's representative from even trying to say anything about the case. He made it clear "that wasn't why we were are today and I am only judging on whether I should grant a set aside"

He wanted to know why MIL had made no attempt to verify Mr B's address before filing a claim. No satisfactory answers were forthcoming. The advocate stated MIL had got the data from the DVLA, which was not correct as they got it from NWPE. Ms B in fact had a letter from the DVLA confirming this but this was not needed. The Judge just looked at her and said "I take it when you moved house your car went with you?" and she just replied "Yes Sir".  This was enough proof for the judge.

The judge granted the set-aside and pointed out that MIL would have substantial problems with their deed of allocation should they wish to continue with a new hearing.

Ms B asked for her costs and the judge ruled that as Ms B had been severely disadvantaged by having to pay £255 for a set-aside hearing, MIL should refund this to her within 14 days.

Prankster Note

MIL will have paid out around £500 to get this far for a claim involving a disputed £100 parking charge. Given that they have never been known to provide a valid deed of allocation they have no real prospect of success at a final hearing against defendants who raise this as a point of dispute.

Just recently it seems MIL have not been including the deed of assignment in their evidence packs - no doubt in the hope a judge will rule that it is satisfactory without having actually seen it.

It is surprising to people not in the know that a business can be run filing for claims which have no real hope of success at the hearing stage.

Ms Barry confirms she is extremely happy with the result so far and reports it is a lovely feeling when justice is done. She would like to encourage any motorist who has been unfairly lumbered with a CCJ to consider going through the set-aside process.

The  Government recently announced a consultation to stop this nasty practice of granting judgments without confirming the victim's address.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-measures-to-protect-consumers-from-debt-claims


Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster


14 comments:

  1. Nice, shame she did not ask for costs of attending court etc. An extra ton in the old sky rocket always help.

    Anyone seen Matt Murdoch lately???????

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  2. funny how mil sent a rep to court , as they had told the dvla that they would not handle any data from North West Parking Enforcement again .

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  3. Our case was very similar to this, found the ccj on my girlfriend's credit record in relation to a claim from MIL, claim sent to old address. The difference was that they sent no representative to the set aside hearing and instead consented to the set aside by email on the day. The judge ruled that MIL would have 14 days to reissue the claim to our new address or it would be struck out. If they issued the claim we would have 28 days to form a defence. Consenting to the claim seems like an easy way out for MIL to cut their losses, since no costs were awarded to us. MIL had bought the debt from capital 2 coast t/a one parking solution.

    The consultation is welcomed because we're £255 down due to the actions of this spurious company and it has nearly cost us our house. The whole system that allows these default judgements is a joke. If as part of the application the courts made a simple address check against public records they would have seen that the address was no longer current (and hadnt been for over a year before the claim was issued), it would surely free up their time of dealing with set asides!

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    1. Why not issue a MCOL on MIL for recovery of your £255?

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    2. You can probably issue a claim for a breach of data protection to either MIL or the parking company. email for details

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    3. I would issue a claim for dpa and include a claim for negligence for issuing without checking the address.

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    4. sent to last known address , DVLA data only available once under currant law

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    5. The DVLA are not the only source of addresses. ANy competent and prudent company would check an aged address before issuing a claim. Bottom feeding companies run the risk of a DPA claim.

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    6. new laws coming in shortly by the DVLA , debt collectors (parking offences) using v888/2 will be reduced from 6 yrs to 6 mths , any access for private parking MUST be done via v888/2 , conformation received from DVLA regarding a TNC collection scam

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    7. I am considering setting up a company to buy dpa claims against MIL

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    8. ask the government for backing ,,,, they helped PE once will a start up loan

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  4. I will be employing Matt Murdoch (Murdock) to collect the overdue DPA claims, I have a nice Deed of Assignment ready to go.

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