A little afraid at the moment

[chrismhutchinson]

HI

 

my first post here but have been reading through the forum for a while.

 

my partner and i decided to reclaim our charges from when we were students. the charges came to a whopping £4335 between us

 

we followed the processes of contacting the bank firstly, secondly and thirdly. following in each case the templates of the forum editing them as was appropriate.

 

we filed a small claim online and sent off our details to the courts. we then recieved the standard letter that LLoyds will defend the entire claim.

 

The bank were given the obligutory 28 days to file a defense and up to yesterday they hadn't done this and 28 days was due on monday.

th dreaded letter came through this morning saying that a defense had been filed.

 

it's the contents of the defense that worry me slightly and i've not seen anyone else worry about this on the forum i thought i would ask

 

the defense states:

 

1. The defendant LLoyds TSB Bank plc( the bank) is a Bank whose registered office is blah blah blah....

2. The defendant will object that the particulars of claim in this action disclose no reasonable cause of action against the defendant and makes no allegations against the defendant as to why the defendant should be liable to the claiment for the amount claimed.

3. the particulars of the claim do not comply with civil procedure rules as (amongst other things) they do not show how the sum of £4330.50 is arrived at and the particulars of the claim are too vauge. the statement of the claim shows no reasonable grounds for bringing the claim

 

it's this paragraph that bugged me the most. is this right and are we still in the right to claim ?

[GaryH]

Dont worry, its another SC&M dirty tactic - this is nothing that cannot be sorted out.

 

This is becoming a more frequantly used method of delay lately, its happened a couple of times now. Becouse there is no space for providing a schedule of your charges on moneyclaim, they are using this to their advantage. You may need help from a site helper or mod on this, but I would advise that you contact the court ASAP - explain the situation and see if you can send a schedule of the charges to attach to your particulars of claim. You will probably have to pay a non-returnable £35 amendment fee though.

 

This is a lesson to anyone else about to file on MCOL - ALWAYS send a schedule of charges to the court as soon as you've filed the claim. I think this needs to be mentioned in the MCOL particulars guideance notes.

[barracad]

You have already sent Lloyds two schedule of charges - one with the preliminary letter and one with the LBA. To say they have no idea of how you arrived at the figure is nonsense.

 

You could send a schedule of charges to the solicitors with a covering letter if you wish to do so advising that this is a breakdown of your charges and that you are surprised that their client has not forwarded this to them as they have already been provided with two copies.

[vckyjam]

Dont be afraid they are doing this all the time, they are just trying to hold things up. I e-mailed my list of charges to the court to be on the safe side and i am still awaiting an answer to see if this is ok.

 

As the above post says you have already sent it to them twice, just send them again a list of charges (i would send it to the court as well)

 

Dont panic....all will be fine

 

Vicky

[chrismhutchinson]

thanks for that. as a quick note i havent sent the courts the charges due to the online system but sent the bank the charges on the primary letter. hopefully that's still ok but we're sending the details to the court anyway. if i get charged i'll tag those onto the charges already accumulated.

[Rosemary]

Definitely don't worry. They said exactly the same on my claim. As I had already sent the relevant breakdowns (twice) to the bank in the prelim letters, I certainly lost no sleep. You will get your opportunity when the Allocation Questionnaires go round, as it is considered 'correct' to copy your schedule to their solicitors. I attached ALL the previous correspondence to that, including the breakdown again and put the original to the court and copied all to their solicitors.

[reload]

Erm - hold on one second. I obviously don't want to worry you, but I've seen a couple of other cases recently with a similar defense that have made my desk start whimpering in advance of it meeting my forehead.

 

Any chance you can paste in your Particulars of Claim for us to see? As in, the block of text (as it should be) which you used when initially filing the claim with Moneyclaim online. It could be that there's an error in there which SCM have picked up on, as they do seem to nitpick on every single point they can.