Bugger - appeal lost. Yes, they may take it to the next stage but I foresee a letter from PE in my near future

Maybe but the judge gave the impression that he just wanted to be shot of the whole thing and having an appeal court decision to fall back on would have suited him fine it only took him 5 minutes to decide to stay the case...

Case stayed, pending the 'Beavis' appeal.

I tried to argue that the Beavis case was different to mine because PE do not pay Morrisons any monthly fee to act in the car park, whereas they do pay in the Beavis case, so easier for them to calculate a PEoL. Judge registered this but wasn't convinced enough to carry on. Personally, I think this was because he didn't know enough of the issue - he told the PE solicitor to schedule a full half day if they re-list the case so he has time to research all the notes.

I have checked the original parking permission - nothing to help me there, sadly.

Great, my case is next Wednesday, the day after the Beavis appeal judgement is due (although it may come out later). According to the Prankster blog, if Beavis loses, so do I! If the judgement is not out by then, they might stay the case until it does.

My main point of defence was the fact that Mmorrisons is not the landowner and so have no right to allow PE to run the car park. This was based on a land registry search of who the landowner is - it is officially Safeway Stores Ltd. and not strictly Morrisons. I thought this meant that Safeways (who still trade in the US and are thus an active company) had kept ownership of the land and rented it out to Morrisons, although I could find no evidence of this either way and Safeways never replied to my letters (could not find any other contact details).

Now I realise that the address I sent the letters too (recorded delivery, signed for ok) is the SAME as Morrisons HQ !! So maybe they are the landowner's indirectly.

All of which might be irrelevant if the Beavis appeal loses! Wonderful!

What's Morrison's take on this? Are they happy that one of their customers is being taken to court?

I contacted them originally - they came back to say they had persuaded PE to withdraw the claim IF I paid their £60 'costs'. They didn't seem to understand the whole idea of the illegality of PEs position or the principle of having to pay to park in a free car park.

I can sort of understand Morissons point of view - they are trying to stop local office people parking all day for free in their car park. In the cut-throat supermarket business, the cost of car park management (barriers, tickets, extra staff) is prohibitive, when they can hand it over to a company like PE and it costs them nothing. They won't even lose me as a customer as the shop is too convenient.

Thanks for that - they have quoted the Beavis case, so will make sure this is mentioned - is there a link to somewhere I can prove it is on appeal?

The letter offering to dismiss the case if I pay costs says 'without prejudice' on it - I thought that meant I couldn't use it in court?

Ok, been a while but finally have my court date as mid-April and I've just received the wad of paper from PE.

Even though they never replied to my CPR 31.14 request, they have now included a document which is supposedly their contract with Morrisons. Two points:

1. Can I get it excluded on the day as evidence because they didn't send it when I asked?

2. According to the Land Regitsry, Morrisons are NOT the landowner, so surely this contract is useless? In the contract, they have a line that says;

'[Morrisons] being the landowner of the site (or as a tenant or licensee and having the prerequisite authority to bind the landowner)'

I assume I can argue that they have not proved any such 'prerequisite authority'? There is no mention anywhere in the court pack of the real landowner.

Try here;

 

 

http://www.parking-prankster.com/case-law.html

Ah, nice one, that is what I wanted.

Interesting that in the one most relevant to me, the case lasted about 10 minutes! The defendant hardly said a word. In that case (PE v. Sharma), PE even had a contract with the landowner (which they don't have in my case) and PE still lost!

I already have my own thread - look at the recent posts, there is one started by me which I just updated a few minutes ago....

Plenty case info here:

 

http://www.parking-prankster.com/resources.html

This site is just a list of cases with one-line summaries - anyone know how to get the full decision?

UPDATE - never received anything from PE from my CPR31.14 request (permission from landowner) and never heard back from the landowner either. I suspect the landowner just have an office with a receptionist to show some legal presence in the UK as they don't trade here any more.

I submitted my skeleton defence to the court and, today, PE have replied to say they will continue to court. They sent me an interesting 46 page defence document!

In it, they cite a recent case against them in East Anglia, which they won. Reading through it, there are some useful tips in there and one glaring reason why they won, which isn't a fact in my case. I won't clarify that now, in case PE lawyers read this but I will update this thread after my case completes, for better or worse.

On those lines, there are lots of posts in this forum saying how 'PE always lose at small claims courts' BUT I don't see any actual threads with people that has actually happened too (I'm not talking about POPLA decisions). Is this because they are not allowed to talk about completed cases? Or has no-one actually won against them and they're too embarrased to admit it?

Just an update as promised.

 

 

POPLA Appeal WON!!

 

 

We've had the below notification from POPLA regarding the appeal we submitted for my dad,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Took a while but we got there.

A big huge thanks to all you guys for your help!

Would you be able to PM me? I can't PM you as I don't have enough posts

I am going through a similar case (but too late for POPLA) and the full details of your win would be very useful to me.

Hope you reads this...

I have got the letter, don't worry - in fact, my lever arch file is starting to look quite healthy... I thought that letter could show PEs willingness to resolve the issue and me ignoring it could be a negative thing? I thought this line from the letter was more damning:

'It has come to our attention that you were a genuine customer on the date of the Parking Charge event' - admitting I was actually using Morrisons and not just abusing the car park.

I have been back to Morrisons to ask if any such physical contract/agreement with PE even exists but they bever replied. I didn't chase it up because I discovered they aren't the landowners, so whatever agreement they made is irrelevant. I have mailed the landowners and await their response.

I have already requested the document from PE (CPR 31.14) last week, so, as of tomorrow, they are beyond the one week deadline they are supposed to reply by. I'm guessing that will be a point in my favour in the actual case as well...

After I contacted Morrisons with proof thatI had been shopping in their store on the day in question, PE have now sent me a letter offering to drop the claim if I pay them £60 (their costs). I was tempted at first but then realised that I would be paying them £60 for staying 15 minutes beyond an arbitary time limit set by themselves on land they don't own, in a free car park . Not happening.

Morrisons have no proof that they gave PE permission to set-up and anyway, found out that the landowner is still Safeway. I've sent them a letter to ask if they were asked for permission...pretty unlikely, I imagine.

The planning department of the council have replied to say there is no specific conditions on the car park from the original planning permission.

Also, PE have not yet replied to my CPR request for proof of permission. That was recieved by them on Oct 23rd (Royal Mail tracking), so now on the one week deadline.

Onwards....

The site was used for many years as a car park for the High Street, originally, when Safeway applied for planning permission, it was granted on the condition that other shoppers could use it, they had a manned barrier where you obtained a ticket on entry, and up to a certain time was free. Now a Morrisons, the barrier was removed and up until recently, parking was monitored manually, now it is by camera.

I found one planning application from 1991 which seems to be when the original site was built (?) but there is no specific condition of who could use the car park.

As regards previous cases, I'll just take a list of cases and references with me and just use them if it seems the judge is unaware of the history.

Still can't work out where to get transcripts from - any ideas?

How do I get transcripts or details from previous cases? Nothing obvious when I search online...

How do I best explain why I ignored the initial letters from PE, in case I am asked? I can't think of a good reason...

Excellent, thanks ericsbrother....

so nothing mentioned "FINE" on any of the paper work!.

The wording I posted is from the small claims court paperwork and it does say, at the end, 'this is in relation to parking charge xxxxxx'. Is that significant?

As to the signs, I don't think I have anything to complain about - even though I never saw any of the signs until I went to look for them, there are lots of them - however, difficult, if not impossible to read from a car, if that is significant?

This is a close-up (sorry, can't seem to make these pics any bigger):

[ATTACH=CONFIG]53798[/ATTACH]

This is at the entrance, on the pillar tot he left:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]53799[/ATTACH]

This is to the right of the entrance, up on the poles:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]53800[/ATTACH]

Waiting on a response from the council and Morrisons....

Thank you both - I'll follow up with the council.

The wording of the claim does not mention that case, just:

'...for parking on private land in breach of the terms and conditions (the contract). PEs ANPR system...captured vehicle xxxxxxxx entering and leaving the car park, overstaying the max stay time. The signage, clearly displayed at the entrance to and throughout the car park [true but impossible to read from a car], states that this is private land, is managed by PE and is a max stay site, along with other T&Cs by which those who park on site agree to be bound. In accordance with the T&Cs set out in the signage, the parking charge becomes payable. Notice under the Protection of Freedomd Act 2012 has been given under sch 4, making the keeper liable.'

(I have abbreviated Parking Eye to PE to save typing )

Hi,

I'm starting this thread to keep a track of my progress in fighting a small claims court notice I received today.

Background:

my local Morrisons handed control of their car park to ParkingEye about 5 years ago as it is a free car park but

they found local office workers parking there all day - perfectly sensible.

Unfortunately, this caught out a lot of locals who would go to Morrisons and then a few other shops on the local high street.

This happened to my wife only a few months after PE took over.

We recieved a fine in the post from them which I ignored (the advice at the time, about 2009).

I also ignored the following 3 other letters and finally never heard anything again.

In July of this year, my wife got caught again.

We received the fines in the post again and

I ignored them, unaware the standard advice on these had changed.

PE have now referred it to the small claims court and, reading through this and other forums, it looks like it almost certainly will go to court.

I have acknowledged the claim on MCOL, e-mailed Morrisons (not expecting much) and also mailed POPLA (but I think I'm too late to get them involved).

Any other advice?