Hi All,
I couldn't update earlier but I had my hearing last Friday and it was a success
. Claim was dismissed.
Key takeaways from the hearing:
1. It started bit late and lasted about 45min
2. Hearing Judge was very thorough and asked lots of questions to understand my side of story. Then he probed claimant's representative.
3. Referring defence statement (that generic statement I sent earlier), he said he is not bound to agree to another district judge's order. If the order was from higher courts then he will have to adhere to that but not necessarily if a certain order was from another district judge.
3. In his judgement, he made it very clear to me that I am not going to entertain your argument around the procedural defects related to PoC. He said your case has gone through a district judge and the fact that judge allowed the case to continue, did not strike it down and did not ask claimant for an updated PoC, hence he will not consider those arguments.
4. Finally he said I will only consider whether the signage was adequate or not. And on that argument, considering claimant's evidences and statement, and my evidences and arguments, he agreed that signage was not clear and not adequate, and dismissed the claim on that basis.
I think one thing helped was that I did not claim that I didn't see the sign on adjacent pillar. I said I saw the sign on the right side pillar, but no sign on my left side 4 pillars, I believed restriction was only for the right side bays.
So it all came down to actual issue - inadequate signage and I won because there was in fact inadequate signage.
I was bit surprised he did not consider PoFA violations, some false claims in the witness statement, and dismissed those arguments under procedural defects. I was not allowed to speak when he was making his final judgement.
I won only on the core issue, and all other supplementary issues in my witness statement were dismissed. Made me wonder I won't have won if they had any solid evidences for that core issue. In this particular case - defective PoC, questionable landowner authority, PoFA violations etc did not matter.
I don't know if other cases are like this but I felt just putting up the defence and standing up to fight wasn't enough.
Thanks for reading and all the support. It's been an experience.
Cheers
