Late submission of evidence

[Bailey2004]

Hi,

 

I am hoping someone with a bit of legal knowledge can help me.

 

I have issued a court claim for money owed to our company. We atre due in court a week today and the court ordered that we serve our evidence to each other and the court not later than 14 days before the hearing.

 

We duly submitted ours at the beginning of last week by recorded delivery, however, we have only received the defendants evidence today, 7 days late.

 

Is there a process or an application I can make to ask the court to disallow his evidence on the basis of it being late?

[BankFodder]

I'm afraid that these rules are very rarely enforced and the only way you could make a complaint about it would be to refer to it during the hearing, if you found it had actually prejudiced you in that you had been unable to respond to some of the points raised in the defendants bundle because of lack of time.

 

It can be very frustrating but in fact only seven days late is really not bad. We have lots of cases where bundles are left to the last moment.

 

If you did want to challenge it formally then you would have to file an N244 and apply to have the defendant's case struck out as a result. I can pretty well guarantee you that your application would fail. It will cost you about £150 to make the application. The application won't be heard in time for the hearing and might have to be heard at the hearing – that the judge will simply look down his nose at the defendants and allow the case to continue.

 

Short answer – don't bother. Suck it up.

[Bailey2004]

Thanks for your honest reply

[Bailey2004]

One more quick question if i may, wpould I be allowed to submit a reply to his "evidence bundle" as all he has supplied is a witness statement from himself containing a load of lies?

[Ganymede]

One more quick question if i may, wpould I be allowed to submit a reply to his "evidence bundle" as all he has supplied is a witness statement from himself containing a load of lies?

 

No. You've submitted your witness statement with your own arguments. Leave the rest for trial.

[BazzaS]

No. You've submitted your witness statement with your own arguments. Leave the rest for trial.

 

How best should the OP approach this at trial, to ensure their reply is heard?.

"Supplemental to my Witness Statement, as the other side submitted their witness statement less than the 14 days before trial ordered by the court, will the court allow me to address the following points"?

[steampowered]

The court process does not entertain endless back and forth between the parties. You usually only get one chance to serve witness statements, and the rest is resolved at trial.

[BankFodder]

You wouldn't want to submit a reply to the bundle anyway.

 

Your defendant has committed himself to certain things in the bundle. You now have an opportunity to prepare arguments to dislodge his position. Why on earth would you want to give him forewarning of your counterarguments?

 

If all he has done is supplied you with a statement, then he has actually given away his case in advance. It sounds to me as if he has provided you with the equivalent of a skeleton argument and it is not always a good idea to do this.

 

You are in a position now where you have the basis of his case in front of you and you can produce rebuttals to what he says and produce them at court.

 

If at the hearing he tries to produce further documents which should more properly have been included in the bundle, then you can try to challenge them and point out to the judge that you are being ambushed with this material.

 

However, please be aware that generally speaking the judge may frown but he will tend to accept those late documents.

 

Now that you have exchanged your bundles, I don't think you should say any more until you get the hearing.

 

I hope that your bundle hasn't included a statement from you. If it has then frankly you are doing your defendant favour by letting him know what is coming.

 

Silly.

[ericsbrother]

OK you are owed money. On the day you will have to explain how much and why. The judge may invite the defendant to question your statements or the defendant may be invited to give their side of teh story and then each side asks questions baout the evidence offered. You may be asked for a closing statement and the the judge makes a precis of the matters and facts and then reaches a decision based on the relevant law and this is recorded.

So, if you want to rebut the evidence offered by the defendant you should do so either at the latter part of your evidence or when allowed to question the other side's account. It will not be like in a criminal court where someone takes the witness stand and answers individual questions. As the matter is normally quite informal you may well be allowed to raise points that only cropped up on the day but this will be basically staitng things rather then questioning the other party. If it appears as though one party is telling a pack of lies the judge will normally say that they prefer the evidence of one party over the other rather than calling the person out as a liar but if your claim is fatally flawed the defendant telling porkies may not be a deciding factor

[Ganymede]

How best should the OP approach this at trial, to ensure their reply is heard?.

"Supplemental to my Witness Statement, as the other side submitted their witness statement less than the 14 days before trial ordered by the court, will the court allow me to address the following points"?

 

They should expose any lies or inconsistencies during cross examination.