Free Traffic Legal Advice

If you want to pay £0, ignore every offer of settlement that they will try. They have been known to go sown to as little as £5, as though the person responsible for the case is desperate for some minuscule amount of commission.

We have been known to string them along by pretending to hum and hah as though we are considering it, but never by phone or email. Only by text. Can be quite good fun. A bit like deliberately engaging with a Nigerian prince who wants to give you £10,000,000 for safekeeping!

If you search the forum you’ll find lots of examples:

Having received your own N180 (make sure it is not simply a copy of the claimants N180), do not use the paper form. Ignore all the other forms that came with it. you can discard those. Download your own here and fill it in on your computer. You sign it by simply typing your full name in the signature box.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/673341e779e9143625613543/N180_1124.pdf

Here are the answers to some of the less obvious questions:

• The name of the court is "Civil National Business Centre".

• To be completed by "Your full name" and you are the "Defendant".

• C1: "YES"

• D1: "NO". Reason: "I wish to question the Claimant about their evidence at a hearing in person and to expose omissions and any misleading or incorrect evidence or assertions.
Given the Claimant is a firm who complete cut & paste parking case paperwork for a living, having this case heard solely on papers would appear to put the Claimant at an unfair advantage, especially as they would no doubt prefer the Defendant not to have the opportunity to expose the issues in the Claimants template submissions or speak as the only true witness to events in question.."

• F1: Whichever is your nearest county court. Use this to find it: https://www.find-court-tribunal.service.gov.uk/search-option

• F3: "1".

• Sign the form by simply typing your full name for the signature.

When you have completed the form, attach it to a single email addressed to both dq.cnbc@justice.gov.uk and (email of solicitor) and CC in yourself. Make sure that the claim number is in the subject field of the email.

You should already have received the claimant’s N180. Yours is required so that the case gets allocated to your local court, amongst other reasons.

Thank you

Do I leave the bit about mediation blank?

Read Section A.
Mediation is mandatory.

Just had the mediation call

Bethany Eves, who works in Litigation Support at DCB Legal represented the claimant, she confirmed she had permission to settle

They very generously offered a settlement of £200. The mediator, who confirmed she was not legally trained, asked my why I wasn't prepared to settle given that DCB had presented me with a full evidence pack. I advised that as she was not legally trained it would be inappropriate for her to push me on my defence and that I was willing to mediate and that my offer was that they could discontinue the claim or settle for £0.

She advised that we would have this heard in front of a judge who was legally trained. The call ended.

This letter makes three key points:

• The claimant has to pay the court fee by 13 July
• The court hearing will be on 10 August
• You and the claimant need to submit Witness Statements, but I don’t think you have posted the complete letter including the part which discusses this

If the deadline for Witness Statements is two weeks prior to the hearing - it may not be - then you have a date for your diary of 14 July to verify the status of the claim with the court, and if the court fee has been paid you need to prepare a Witness Statements according to the deadline given, but generally we don’t advise submitting this until you receive the claimant’s Witness Statement.

If the court fee is not paid, the case will be struck out as it says. Remember that DCB Legal usually discontinue rather than pay the court fee. You should receive a Notice of Discontinuation when they do.

Reply #28:

You can search the forum for any DCB Legal issued claim what the process is and how it ends. It will be processed all the way to allocation to your local county court and once a hearing date is set, there will be a deadline for them to pay the £27 trial fee, four weeks before the hearing. Just before then you will receive an N279 Notice of Discontinuance. You are looking at anything from 6-12 months from now before this ends.

Please ensure that you do not have a deadline for submission of Witness Statements earlier than 14 July.

You have not misread this, but if you have not received a Witness Statement from the claimant then you’re not in as bad a position as you otherwise would be. Yes, you have missed the deadline. If you now prepare and submit a Witness Statement you should note that this is in the absence of a Witness Statement from the claimant.

If you want to cover yourself, you should write and submit a Witness Statement to avoid any suggestion of not following the orders of the court. The fact that the claimant appears not to have done so either doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t.

I wouldn’t go to great lengths, though. I’d expect DCB Legal to discontinue shortly.

MCOL won’t tell you anything useful once the case has been transferred to your local court, which it has.

I don’t think that’s a witness statement, it’s a template/boilerplate/generic defence which is increasingly struck out by the courts as such.

A witness statement is your story, as a witness and probably the only witness for the defence.