Hello All

A work colleague of mine sold a van a few years ago.

He did not complete the DVLA paperwork as the dealer wanted to onward sell the vehicle which happened shortly afterwards.

About a week later it was involved in an accident and the other party which was a business,

after several years of sporadic mail issued and obtained a County Court Judgement for damages,

this despite knowing that my colleague was not at the time the owner or keeper.

He did not know about this having moved house several times but recently had the unpleasant experience of Bailiffs knocking.

I helped him to apply for a Set aside which stopped the Bailiffs and the Hearing is in May.

The set aside application included several bits of evidence (receipts etc) to the court which I presume would have been served to the other side.

My question is this;

the opposing solicitors have twice written asking what evidence we intend to produce in Court.

Am I right in thinking that we only need to provide our statements and evidence to them seven clear days before the Hearing?

If we fail to communicate to them before that are we contravening any protocols?

I see no reason why we need to tell them anything and thus assist them to counter our application before the seven days specified by the normal court process.

They are cut throats and got a judgement against someone who had not damaged their client's vehicle or been the owner/keeper at the time.

I would welcome any comments from forum members.

Many thanks.

I assume your friend has already attached all of his evidence to his set aside application?

Just refer them to the application and appendices, there should be nothing further to serve.

Hello All

A belated update to this thread.

We decided not to engage with the Solicitors any further as they had received the witness statement that was to be used in Court and we did not need to produce anything further.

On the day of the trial which was held at the end of May a local Lady Solicitor turned up and prior to the hearing went over the case with us and in particular gave us her side of it and why we should capitulate!

I have had this sort of treatment before and I had for-warned my friend this might happen.

We had some confidence in our case and we had got as far as the Court doors so lets tell the judge and see what happens.

In the event the Judge overturned the Judgement.

The other side did everything she could possibly do and even presented some material to the Judge that we had not seen which I thought was potentially dodgy but we got a good judge on the day.

The other side did win one minor point which was that they used CPR rules to point out to the Judge that even though the Judgement was overturned they were entitled to certain fees and my friend had to pay up.

The other side said they would push for an immediate Hearing.

The judge asked me how much time we wanted to prepare our defence and I said we would like 28 days which is the time you get if you receive the response pack and ask for more time.

The other side did not like that (really aggressive pushing of the case!!) so the judge compromised on 21 days.

As it happened, our defence was already in place sufficient to begin defending the claim so I put it in quite quickly.

After the trial the lady solicitor became much more friendly and revealed the other side had a description by witnesses of the driver of the van and indicated without saying as much that our guy had no resemblance and provision of a picture of our guy might be enough to finish it.

Given that she knew this in the first place I am dismayed by the efforts she put into trying to win her case.

She clearly knew our guy was not the driver.

current situation is that we are waiting for allocation questionnaire etc.