In this claim the court has directed that you must file and serve your witness statement and evidence significantly earlier than is usual in small claims parking cases, and well before the deadline by which the claimant has to pay the trial fee. At the point you are preparing your witness statement, the claimant may still not have filed or served any witness statement or evidence, and their Particulars of Claim are so sparse and generic that you cannot know with any precision what factual or legal case you are expected to meet. You are therefore placed in an unusual and unfair position: you are being forced to commit to your evidence in a vacuum, based only on inadequate particulars and your own recollection, while the represented claimant can sit back, see your case first, and decide later whether to pay the fee or discontinue.
You should explain in your witness statement that this timetable seriously handicaps you and is contrary to the overriding objective, which requires the court to ensure that parties are on an equal footing and that cases are dealt with fairly and proportionately. You can also make clear that, at this stage, the only concrete facts you can properly address are that this was a hire vehicle, that you were the hirer, and that the claimant has failed to comply with the strict requirements of Schedule 4 paragraphs 13 and 14 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, so they cannot hold you liable as keeper or hirer. Everything else is guesswork until the claimant shows their hand.
Because of this, you should expressly reserve the right in your witness statement to file a short supplemental witness statement later, if the claimant serves their own witness statement or evidence late or only after seeing yours. You can say that any such supplemental statement would be limited to responding to new or different matters raised by the claimant, and you ask the court to allow this in order to give proper effect to the overriding objective and to avoid you being ambushed by late evidence from a legally represented claimant.
For now, as the original N1SDT Claim Form image has been deleted, I could do with seeing it again as I prepare a WS for you that covers this unusual situation. Unless you receive a WS from the claimant by 14th December, remind me here, to give you a holding WS for submission on the 15th December.
