Trade Centre uk/Startline Motor Finance - and Jonathan Hall, DWF Law - solicitor (apparently)

**dx100uk** · February 13

dwf the same lot that make up fake civil restoration shoplifting claims.

utterly useless

this could be a walk in the park.

dx

shellyh24 · February 13

It is quite a laughable response isnt it.

I apologise, I will have to go through 11 pages myself to get this information as I cant remember off the top of my head and I am not at home, but bare with i will find it...

I purchased car 13th October 2023
Collected 15th October 2023
First reported issues with lack of maintenance and miss-selling 27th October via Social Media and then phone call with Manager.
Car taken to them 17th November to bring the car up to date with service and maintenance as agreed.
Friday 17th November on way home car went in to Limp Mode. Answer Phone message left to TCUK garage to report.
Monday 20th November took car back in to the garage TCUK, complained they have damaged the car during their 'rectifying episode'
Thursday 23rd November car broke down and would not run. Same issues as I experienced 17th November, juddering, strong smell of petrol, engine management light on, loud ticking from engine. Undriveable. tried to call TCUK No answer.
Friday 24th November tried calling another 3 times, no answer. Sent Email to TCUK.
Monday 27th Email sent to TCUK and Startline Motor Finance Ltd stating Letter of Rejection. Also called Startline to lodge as complaint and rejection.

RAC Report arranged by myself at my home address December 8th, requested by Startline but paid for by me. Report send to Startline and TCUK. Not accepted by Startline or TCUK. Report stated the car had a mechanical failure due to poor maintenance and lack of servicing!

TCUK collected car on recovery truck 27th December 2023 to do their own inspection.

Own inspection was done, they stated items were serviceable items therefore would not uphold the rejection but they will fix it out of goodwill. I have said no absolutely not.

That is where we are.

And obviously in the meantime I got the CCJ against Startline.

BankFodder · February 13

Thank you. That is helpful. Can you remind me how many days/weeks/months has the car been out of action.

Also, when did you give them notice of rejection.
Verbally?
In writing?
What was the response?

Also, although I expect you have already put it up before, please can you put up a copy of your claim form in PDF format

shellyh24 · February 13

Yes I collected it 15th October

It then wasn't useable for 3 days the first time it broke, and then broke again from the 24th November until today.

I make that 121 days I've had the car (well sort of had it) and 84 days off the road.

I gave them notice of rejection on the phone AND via email on 27th November.

TCUK said absolutely not we will not accept that.

Startline Motor Finance said we have to do an 8 week investigation, have told me TCUK will not accept the rejection and as a gesture of goodwill will fix the car and return it...

I told them it has been 8 weeks and I have had no final response from you,

they said yeah we haven't got one, feel free to go to the Ombudsman...

I have....

480MC719-claim-form-claimant-copy.pdf

BankFodder · February 13

Do I remember correctly that the finance company actually exceeded the eight weeks and didn't come back to you?

shellyh24 · February 13

yes exactly,

i told them they were 5 days over the 8 weeks and i have not had a reply and they had breached FCA regulations etc

they just said 'sorry for the delay, we haven't yet got a resolution'

you are within your rights to go to the ombudsman if you want to' and that was it!

BankFodder · February 13

I have drafted a response.

Please check it. Let me know if there is anything missing. If there is anything incorrect. And of course if you're happy to send it out and if the proposal is acceptable to you.

You shouldn't bank on it being accepted by the other side but it also states your position very clearly and what your approach will be and what your arguments will be if they insist on it going to court.

When did you receive the application notice?

We need to get this out to the other side quickly.

I am aware that other people on this thread have suggested that you should simply ignore them. Normally we would ignore these DWF solicitors who seem to get a lot of their work from bounty hunting. However, this time they have actually begun a legal process rather than simply making threats and so I think that we need to engage.
I think failure to engage, failing to operate, failure to try and figure out a way forward will not necessarily count in your favour.

It's a long letter. Also please be very careful about possible typos. I dictate everything and I don't necessarily proof read very well. At the end of the day if the letter goes out it goes under your name and if there is anything embarrassing it then it will be down to you – not down to me.

Quote

Dear Jonathan Hall

Claim Number XXXX

Please note that I will not be part of any without prejudice obligation in respect of any correspondence generated by me or by yourselves unless you obtain written agreement from me in advance.

For the avoidance of doubt, this means that any correspondence sent by me to you and any correspondence from this date sent by yourselves to me will be made available to the court.

Please also note, that I will not be bound by any unilaterally imposed duties of confidentiality unless you obtain agreement in writing from me in advance.

This letter will form the basis of my reply to your application notice and your witness statement and will be sent to the court unless you agree to my proposal within seven days.

I have received a copy of your application notice together with your witness statement which presumably outline some of the details of your client’s defence.

I notice that there was no dispute that your clients were properly served as defendants in the above claim.

I understand also that they did forward details of claim to you and that it was you by your own negligence that the matter was not dealt with correctly with the inevitable result I obtained a default judgement.

I have attempted to enforce a judgement by instructing High Court Enforcement Officers but it seems that the London office of your client holds no assets and enforcement was impossible.

I understand now that you are requesting that the judgement be set aside and that you have signed a statement of truth that you believe that if you are allowed to defend, that you have real prospect of success.

Defendants’ Failure to Act Once They Had Received the Claim Documents

I understand that apparently this powerful and experienced and well-resourced company received claim documents but did not proceed to deal with the matter correctly because apparently they were frightened to access the County Court website because they were worried that the County Court website might infect their system with some malicious virus, this even though they had received sealed official County Court documents notifying them that a claim had been started and giving them an official County Court link in order to access the claim and to deal with it appropriately.

This is scarcely believable. Even if your clients usually do conduct themselves correctly, it is beyond doubt that they do receive claims for this and that on a recently regular basis.

It is beyond doubt that their systems and their staff development have already envisaged this kind of communication and that they are trained to deal with it.

I understand that you are saying that your clients have not obtained a copy of the particulars of claim because they were frightened to log onto the County Court website – despite having received official papers/notification of a claim against them.

If that is correct that they have not seen a copy of the particulars of claim because they were frightened to access the County Court website, and if that truly explains why you say that you also have not seen details of the claim, then

I am puzzled that your witness statement has managed to address most of the details of that claim apparently without having seen the claim.

And I am particularly puzzled as to why you haven’t simply written to me and asked me to supply you with a copy of the particulars rather than jumping in immediately into a procedure which effectively is going to money and resources both of yourself, your clients, and most importantly the Court.

And as a matter of courtesy and good practice, I am enclosing a copy of the particulars of claim with this letter.

Once again, it would have been so easy – you had only to ask.

Additional negligence and breaches of duty by your clients/defendants

Although it hasn’t been referred to in the claim, if your clients insist on going to court, the judge will hear that your clients refused comply with their new FCA “Consumer Duty” but rather chose to support the dealer in the face of overwhelming evidence.

When pressed, your clients agreed to open an investigation. Under FOS rules they had eight weeks to complete an investigation and then provide a reference to the FOS.

They breached this deadline and failed to communicate with me at all.

I eventually was obliged to chase your clients myself after the expiry of the eight week deadline and they then admitted that they did not have any solution and no final response and that if I wanted I should continue to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

As you are aware, I have decided to go to the courts.

I notice that in your witness statement you seem to suggest that I should have opted to go to the FOS rather than to the courts.

I hope you realise that this is rubbish. I have a complete right of access to the County Court and this is what I have done.

You had better understand that your clients are only giving you a small part of the story – and the

part which suits their purposes.

You are being led around by the nose by your clients and now they want to attempt to do the same with the court.

You can inform your clients that once this matter is settled in my favour – as it most certainly will be, that a further legal action we brought against them for their failings. For their failure to treat me fairly contrary to FCA regulations and also for their breach of contract in their failure to comply with the FCA Consumer Duty.

I doubt whether you are aware of this new FCA regulation.

Your Own Negligence in Dealing with Instructions from Your Client

You have admitted that it is your negligence which has exacerbated the problem which began with your clients apparently frightened to access the County Court website.

I notice that on your application notice you have made no reference to costs.

I consider this to be disingenuous and I am informing you now that unless you agree, I shall be asking the court to award in my favour all the costs which you have wasted including any interest which might be awarded on these wasted costs – you will know this better than me.

For the avoidance of doubt, this includes the claim fee, the fee for the application notice, the fee for the failed enforcement – all of which have been incurred because of inactivity by yourself or by your client.

In order to save further time and trouble for the court, you might want to respond on this point and let us all know that you do not object.

That You Have a Real Prospect of Success

Your witness statement is rather chaotic in this respect. You start off by saying that the faults in my vehicle were not present at the point of sale and point of delivery.

You later then go on to admit that the Consumer Rights Act provides that any faults which manifest themselves within the first six months are taken to have been present at the point of sale and delivery.

You then go on to agree that the above presumption is rebuttable and that if you are allowed to defend that you will adduce expert evidence.

Clearly this last assertion is an admission that you do not have evidence to rebut the statutory presumption. This last assertion amounts to an admission that you are hoping to adduce evidence if you are permitted to continue and that you will be employing experts to investigate and that if the experts agree that the faults were not present at the point of sale, new then have a real prospect of success.

Effectively what we are hearing here is that you don’t know if you have a real prospect of success at all. You don’t have evidence to support this but you are hoping that you will be able to employ some experts and you are then hoping that they will then find evidence in your favour.

All rather speculative – but the main point is that you have signed a statement of truth that you have a real prospect of success – but the truth is that you have no idea – because you have admitted that you don’t have any evidence.

Additional reasons why You Will Not Succeed at Trial

although it has not been specifically referred to in the particulars of claim, of which a copy is attached, your clients are well aware that there has been a catalogue of serious defects which have been confirmed by various independent inspections.

Furthermore, not only are I asserted my right to reject which has itself been rejected by the dealer – with the support of your client – even though it is I who are there customer, not the dealer, but also the car has been so faulty that I have been deprived of its use for 84 days out of 121 days of ownership.

I have been unable to use the vehicle at all since 24 November until the current date and continuing.

The dealership collected the vehicle on 27 December 2023 ostensibly to carry out their own inspection and they have had it in their possession ever since.

Proposal for Settlement

I suggest that you advise your clients to accept the rejection, to refund me in full and to cancel all agreements.

You agree to pay me at the County Court rate on the value of my claim.

I suggest that you advise your clients to refund me all costs incurred so far. What you want to do about the costs incurred as a result of your negligence is between you and your client.

Any adverse entries relating to me on your client file to be removed within seven days. Your clients to arrange the removal of all adverse data relating to me with any organisation with whom they have shared the data within 14 days.

Your clients agree to ensure the deletion of all data relating to me with their used-car dealer partner within 14 days.

Your clients to confirm to me in writing and within 21 days that all my requests relating to my personal data have been complied with.

All actions – enforcement and application notice to be stayed until the above points have been complied with after which, the application notice will be permitted to proceed uncontested.

The above agreements to be rendered into a Tomlin order drafted by the defendant and all costs to be met by the defendant.

This will have the advantage to the defendant of closing the file on this issue. They will have the advantage to you of sparing you the humiliation of suffering your role in this being discussed in the County Court and of the inevitable criticism by the judge being included in the transcript.

The advantage to me clearly will be that I will have my money back. The matter will be closed. And I can carry on a more experienced and wiser individual.

As I have already pointed out, all of this will be shown to the judge.

As I have pointed out, you better think carefully about what you’re doing. I’m happy to go all the way on this. The only compromise I am prepared to make is to spare you the embarrassment of a judgement and the highlighting of your own negligence role in the saga which seems to correspond broadly with the level of negligence exercised by your clients.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am objecting to your application notice. If you happen to succeed then we will go to court unless you offer me everything that I’m asking for anyway.

I think the best thing you can do is to start to disassociate yourself from this action because you won’t win.

I look forward to hearing from you

Dear Jonathan Hall.docx

shellyh24 · February 13

Haha thats brilliant thank you!
Shall i send that via email now? obviously with my personal information and references added in?

oh, and i received their email and application notice on Friday 9th Feb

BankFodder · February 13

No, I don't want you to send the email of now. I want you to settle down and read it. And then read it again. And then check it for typos, any errors.

He is making a fool himself. We want try make sure that you aren't doing the same thing.

I want you to deal with this in a steady methodical and structured way.

There is at least one typo that I know of and clearly you haven't spotted it otherwise you would have raised it.

And then I want you to come back and discuss it and we can check it and see if there's anything else we want to add.

Don't send off documents unless we have checked them and given them a final okay

Any update on this please?

**dx100uk** · February 15

3 hours ago, shellyh24 said:

might infect their system with some malicious virus

this is not correct, they dont say that.

3 hours ago, shellyh24 said:

they were frightened to log onto the County Court website

needs the reason, they thought the log-in was a one hit wonder to only be used on one PC. this i can understand from starline, but not from a solicitor if they are 'bolstering' this theory as an excuse.

3 hours ago, shellyh24 said:

Any adverse entries relating to me on your client file to be removed within seven days. Your clients to arrange the removal of all adverse data relating to me with any organisation with whom they have shared the data within 14 days.

i would demand total removal of the A/C from all 3 cra ref agency file.

the agreement that allowed it to be entered will no longer exist.

BankFodder · February 15

Yes you are right. I don't know why but when I read it I thought I saw that they were worried about it and so I decided to exaggerate it to make it look more ridiculous.
Reading it again I see that they were apparently simply worried about using their one-time security code.

Of course this is ridiculous as well – but I am going to amend the response.

I also agree about specifically referring to the three credit agencies

**Nicky Boy** · February 15

@BankFodder

I've made a few minor edits to the above BF. (Mostly dictation errors.)

Could you just cast your eye over quickly to make sure I haven't screwed anything up?

BankFodder · February 15

Thanks, would you mind pointing me to the edits by displaying them in a different colour – red for instance.

**Nicky Boy** · February 15

Dear Jonathan Hall

Claim Number XXXX

name of case – XXX v XXX company

Please note that I will not be part of any without prejudice obligation in respect of any correspondence generated by me or by yourselves unless you obtain written agreement from me in advance.

For the avoidance of doubt, this means that any correspondence sent by me to you and any correspondence from this date sent by yourselves to me will be made available to the court.

Please also note, that I will not be bound by any unilaterally imposed duties of confidentiality unless you obtain agreement in writing from me in advance.

1. I have received a copy of your application notice together with your witness statement which presumably is intended to outline this some of the details of your clients’ defence.

2. I notice that your witness statement which contains a signed statement of truth assures the court that you have a real prospect of success if you are permitted to defend.

3. However, in your witness statement you admit that you have never seen the particulars of claim and of course this means that you have no idea of the details of the claim for the specifics of the claimant’s complaint.

4. In fact at one point in your witness statement you make it clear that your client has requested that you advise them on the general dispute rather than the cause of action contained in the County Court claim form.

5. Of course this is not surprising as according to you neither your clients nor yourself have ever seen the claim form and so each of you are simply guessing at the substance of the claim.

6. I am at a loss to understand how you can give your word to the court that you have a real prospect of success when you have no idea of what it is you are attempting to succeed against.

7. I notice that there was no dispute that your clients were properly served as defendants in the above claim.

8. I understand also that your clients did forward details of claim to you and that it was you by your own negligence that the matter was not dealt with correctly and so they did not defend the claim and I obtained a judgement as a result.

9. I have attempted to enforce a judgement by instructing High Court Enforcement Officers but it seems that the London office of your client holds no assets and enforcement was impossible.

10. I understand now that you are requesting that the judgement be set aside and that you have signed a statement of truth that you believe that if you are allowed to defend, that you have real prospect of success.

Defendants’ Failure to Act Once They Had Received the Claim Documents

11. I understand that apparently this powerful and experienced and well-resourced company received claim documents but did not proceed to deal with the matter correctly because apparently they were worried about to accessing the County Court website because they were concerned that they might not be able to gain access a second time.

12. This even though they had received sealed official County Court documents notifying them that a claim had been started and giving them an official County Court link in order to access the claim and to deal with it appropriately.

13. This is scarcely believable. Even if your clients usually do conduct themselves correctly, it is beyond doubt that they do receive claims for this and that on a recently regular basis.

14. It is beyond doubt that their systems and their staff development have already envisaged this kind of communication and that they are trained to deal with it.

15. I understand that you are saying that your clients have not obtained a copy of the particulars of claim because they were frightened to log onto the County Court website – despite having received official papers/notification of a claim against them.

16. If that is correct that they have not seen a copy of the particulars of claim because they were worried about accessing the County Court website, and if that truly explains why you say that you also have not seen details of the claim, then I am puzzled that your witness statement purports to address and challenge a County Court claim apparently without having seen the claim and being completely unaware of the details of the claim.

17. In fact what you have attempted to describe to the court as being the substance of my claim, is nothing more than some imagined construction based on a partial version of a story which you have received from the defendants.

18. And I am particularly puzzled as to why you haven’t simply written to me and asked me to supply you with a copy of the particulars rather than jumping in immediately into a procedure which effectively is going to waste money and resources both of yourself, your clients, and most importantly the Court.

19. I am fully prepared to provide you with a copy of the particulars of claim if you write to me and ask for it.

20. Once again, it would all have been so easy – you had only to ask and would have saved time and trouble and money and inconvenience in particular to the Court.

Additional negligence and breaches of duty by your clients/defendants

21. Although it hasn’t been referred to in the claim, if your clients insist on going to court, the judge will hear that your clients have failed to comply with their new FCA “Consumer Duty” and preferred to support the dealer against their own customer in the face of overwhelming evidence.

22. It is clear that your clients are motivated by profit and what they take to be the “line of least resistance” rather than taking a customer facing approach and complying with their FCA “Consumer Duty”

23. In fact your clients ignore their “Consumer Duty” so routinely that before the County Court claim was commenced, I was obliged to press them to open an investigation. Under FOS rules they had eight weeks to complete an investigation and then provide a reference to the FOS.

24. Your clients even breached this deadline and failed to communicate with me at all.

25. I eventually was obliged to chase your clients myself after the expiry of the eight week deadline and they then admitted that they did not have any solution and no final response and that if I wanted I should continue to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

26. As you are aware, I have decided to go to the courts.

27. I notice that in your witness statement you seem to suggest that I should have opted to go to the FOS rather than to the courts.

28. I hope you realise that this is rubbish and smacks of either you or your client grasping at straws in order to restore some sense of Face in a situation which the both of you have managed very badly.

29. I have a complete right of access to the County Court and this is what I have done.

30. You had better understand that your clients are only giving you a small part of the story – and the part which suits their purposes.

31. You are being led around by the nose by your clients and now they want to attempt to do the same with the court.

32. I would suggest now that your statement of truth in which you say that you have an honest belief in what you have written simply means that you have honestly rehashed what your clients have told you.

33. I think it would be reasonable to require your clients to attend court and to give evidence on their own behalf rather than the second-hand version which you have provided in your witness statement.

34. You can inform your clients that once this matter is settled in my favour – as it most certainly will be, that a further legal action we brought against them for their failings. For their failure to treat me fairly contrary to FCA regulations and also for their breach of contract in their failure to comply with the FCA Consumer Duty.

35. I expect that you are unaware of this recent FCA regulation .

36. The evidence seems to be that your clients are not aware of the FCA Consumer Duty either, although they have a statutory obligation to be aware of it and to comply.

Your Own Negligence in Dealing with Instructions from Your Client

37. You have admitted that it is your negligence which has exacerbated the problem which began with your clients apparently worried about accessing County Court website.

38. I notice that on your application notice you have made no reference to costs.

39. I consider this to be disingenuous and I am informing you now that unless you agree, I shall be asking the court to award in my favour all the costs which you have wasted including any interest which might be awarded on these wasted costs – you will know this better than me.

40. For the avoidance of doubt, this includes the claim fee, the fee for the application notice, the fee for the failed enforcement – all of which have been incurred because of inactivity by yourself or by your client.

41. In order to save further time and trouble for the court, you might want to respond on this point and let us all know that you do not object.

That You Have a Real Prospect of Success

42. Your witness statement is rather chaotic in this respect. You start off by saying that the faults in my vehicle were not present at the point of sale and point of delivery.

43. You later then go on to admit that the Consumer Rights Act provides that any faults which manifest themselves within the first six months are taken to have been present at the point of sale and delivery.

44. You then go on to agree that the above presumption is rebuttable and that if you are allowed to defend that you will adduce expert evidence.

45. Clearly this last assertion is an admission that you do not have evidence to rebut the statutory presumption. This last assertion amounts to an admission that you are hoping to adduce evidence if you are permitted to continue and that you will be employing experts to investigate and that if the experts agree that the faults were not present at the point of sale, you then have a real prospect of success.

46. Effectively what we are hearing here is that you don’t know if you have a real prospect of success at all. You don’t have evidence to support this but you are hoping that you will be able to employ some experts and you are then hoping that they will then find evidence in your favour.

47. All rather speculative – but the main point is that you have signed a statement of truth that you have a real prospect of success – but the truth is that you have no idea – because you have admitted that you don’t have any evidence and furthermore, you have admitted that you don’t even know what the claim is about.

Additional reasons why You Will Not Succeed at Trial

48. Your clients are well aware that there has been a catalogue of serious defects which have been confirmed by various independent inspections.

49. I gather they haven’t told you any of this.

50. Furthermore, not only have I asserted my right to reject which has itself been rejected by the dealer – with the support of your client and in breach of the FCA Consumer Duty and – even though it is I who are their customer, not the dealer, – but also the car has been so faulty that I have been deprived of its use for 84 days out of 121 days of ownership.

51. I have been unable to use the vehicle at all since 24 November until the current date and continuing.

52. The dealership collected the vehicle on 27 December 2023 ostensibly to carry out their own inspection and they have had it in their possession ever since.

53. Did you know this? Have your clients told you this?

54. Of course you know . You must be fully aware of all this because your clients must have told you the whole story and no reasonable solicitor could be confident of their real prospect of success unless they did know the whole story. And you have signed a statement of truth assuring the court of your likely victory if you are permitted to defend.

55. And of course because your clients through their dealership partners have been in possession of my vehicle for almost 2 months, they have had more than ample opportunity to inspect the vehicle and to adduce their own expert evidence.

56. I’m assuming that they haven’t bothered.

57. The reasonable inference is that both your clients and the dealership think that the “line of least resistance” is simply to bludgeon me into giving up and to accepting their serious contractual breaches while at the same time they have the use of my money and I am left without transport.

Conditions for Settlement

58. You advise your clients to accept the rejection, to refund me in full and to cancel all agreements.

59. You agree to pay me at the County Court rate of interest on the value of my claim.

60. Your clients refund me all costs incurred so far. What you want to do about the costs incurred as a result of your own negligence is between you and your client.

61. Any adverse entries relating to me in your clients’ files to be removed within seven days. Your clients to arrange the removal of all adverse data relating to me with any organisation with whom they have shared the data within 14 days. Your clients to inform me within 14 days as to who they have shared my personal data with.

62. In particular, any entries relating to me on any credit reference agency file to be deleted within 14 days.

63. Your clients agree to ensure the deletion of all data relating to me with their used-car dealer partner within 14 days.

64. Your clients to confirm to me in writing and within 21 days that all my requests relating to my personal data have been complied with.

65. All actions – enforcement by me and application notice by you to be stayed until the above points have been complied with after which, the application notice will be permitted to proceed uncontested.

66. The above agreements to be rendered into a Tomlin order drafted by the defendant and all costs to be met by the defendant.

67. In default of full compliance with the above conditions, the judgement will be allowed to stand uncontested and your clients will either settle or else permit enforcement to be carried out without hindrance.

68. This will have the advantage to the defendant of closing the file on this issue. Your clients will not have an embarrassing judgement against them. This agreement will have the advantage to you of sparing you the embarrassment of suffering your role in this matter being discussed in the County Court and of the inevitable criticism by the judge being included in the transcript.

69. The advantage to me clearly will be that I will have my money back and all losses incurred addressed by your client. The matter will be closed. And I can carry on a more experienced and wiser individual.

70. As I have already pointed out, all of this will be shown to the judge.

71. As I have pointed out, you had better think carefully about what you’re doing. I’m happy to go all the way on this. The only compromise I am prepared to make is to spare you and your clients the embarrassment of a judgement and the highlighting of your own negligence role in the saga which seems to correspond broadly with the level of negligence exercised by your clients and also their dealership partner.

72. At the end of the day you should understand that nothing I’m asking for is unreasonable. I’m only trying to get everybody to do properly the job for which they are paid for and which they should have done properly in the first place... You included.

73. You should realise that we have here a remarkable coincidence of haphazard mismanagement:

a. a dealer who supplies defective vehicles and refuses to stand by their consumer obligations,

b. a finance company and which prefers to reinforce their dealership partner’ s failure to enforce consumer obligations and which apparently is too frightened to deal with litigation properly because they are concerned about accessing the claim on the County Court website,

c. and a solicitor who deals with client instructions inefficiently or negligently and who indulges in speculative witness statements without checking the facts.

74. It really seems as if I never had a chance!

75. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am objecting to your application notice. If you happen to succeed then we will go to court unless you offer me everything that I’m asking for anyway.

76. I think the best thing you can do is to start to disassociate your clients and yourself from this action because you won’t win.

77. I suggest that you contact the court and put a hold on the set-aside application and start thinking in a mature and businesslike way about the hole that you and your clients and the dealership have got themselves into – and stop digging.

Statement of truth

BankFodder · February 15

Thanks for this. I have accepted some of your corrections but reverted some of the others.

In particular "adduce" instead of producing evidence
"apparently" to to do scepticism
multiple and's for emphasis of each point it is being made.

Very helpful to have somebody else looking over a rather long piece of text

Now all we need is the owner of this thread to get engaged to be more closely and we can send it off and see what happens. It really should have been sent off by now

shellyh24 · February 15

I will copy and paste this to my email then add my personal details, it spell checks it for me but i appreciate that it has already been looked over above, thank you

BankFodder · February 15

Thank you but we would like to see the final finished version before going out

BankFodder · February 16

I'm making a further amendment to the document above.

Please will you engage with this thread and confirm that you haven't yet sent out the document. We definitely want to see it before it goes out in final form.

BankFodder · February 16

I have introduced some additional paragraphs into this document. The entire document would have to be renumbered in terms of its paragraphs to include the additions which I have just made.

Please will you confirm that you are doing this. Please will you confirm that you are not sending out a document until we have finished it and approved it.
I'm sorry to say that your long absences from this thread when we are acting very quickly is troublesome and inconvenient and I'm concerned that you're going to rush off sending half finished documents.
We are doing our best to help you.

Quote

Dear Jonathan Hall

Claim Number XXXX

name of case – XXX v XXX company

Please note that I will not be part of any without prejudice obligation in respect of any correspondence generated by me or by yourselves unless you obtain written agreement from me in advance.

For the avoidance of doubt, this means that any correspondence sent by me to you and any correspondence from this date sent by yourselves to me will be made available to the court.

Please also note, that I will not be bound by any unilaterally imposed duties of confidentiality unless you obtain agreement in writing from me in advance.

1. I have received a copy of your application notice together with your witness statement which presumably is intended to outline this some of the details of your clients’ defence.

2. I notice that your witness statement which contains a signed statement of truth assures the court that you have a real prospect of success if you are permitted to defend.

3. However, in your witness statement you admit that you have never seen the particulars of claim and of course this means that you have no idea of the details of the claim for the specifics of the claimant’s complaint.

4. In fact at one point in your witness statement you make it clear that your client has requested that you advise them on the general dispute rather than the cause of action contained in the County Court claim form.

5. Of course this is not surprising as according to you neither your clients nor yourself have ever seen the claim form and so each of you are simply guessing at the substance of the claim.

6. I am at a loss to understand how you can give your word to the court that you have a real prospect of success when you have no idea of what it is you are attempting to succeed against.

7. I notice that there was no dispute that your clients were properly served as defendants in the above claim.

8. I understand also that your clients did forward details of claim to you and that it was you by your own negligence that the matter was not dealt with correctly and so they did not defend the claim and I obtained a judgement as a result.

9. I have attempted to enforce a judgement by instructing High Court Enforcement Officers but it seems that the London office of your client holds no assets and enforcement was impossible.

10. I understand now that you are requesting that the judgement be set aside and that you have signed a statement of truth that you believe that if you are allowed to defend, that you have real prospect of success.

Defendants’ Failure to Act Once They Had Received the Claim Documents

11. I understand that apparently this powerful and experienced and well-resourced company received claim documents but did not proceed to deal with the matter correctly because apparently they were worried about to accessing the County Court website because they were concerned that they might not be able to gain access a second time.

12. This even though they had received sealed official County Court documents notifying them that a claim had been started and giving them an official County Court link in order to access the claim and to deal with it appropriately.

13. This is scarcely believable. Even if your clients usually do conduct themselves correctly, it is beyond doubt that they do receive claims for this and that on a recently regular basis.

14. It is beyond doubt that their systems and their staff development have already envisaged this kind of communication and that they are trained to deal with it.

15. I understand that you are saying that your clients have not obtained a copy of the particulars of claim because they were frightened to log onto the County Court website – despite having received official papers/notification of a claim against them.

16. If that is correct that they have not seen a copy of the particulars of claim because they were worried about accessing the County Court website, and if that truly explains why you say that you also have not seen details of the claim, then I am puzzled that your witness statement purports to address and challenge a County Court claim apparently without having seen the claim and being completely unaware of the details of the claim.

17. In fact what you have attempted to describe to the court as being the substance of my claim, is nothing more than some imagined construction based on a partial version of a story which you have received from the defendants.

18. And I am particularly puzzled as to why you haven’t simply written to me and asked me to supply you with a copy of the particulars rather than jumping in immediately into a procedure which effectively is going to waste money and resources both of yourself, your clients, and most importantly the Court.

19. I am fully prepared to provide you with a copy of the particulars of claim if you write to me and ask for it.

20. Once again, it would all have been so easy – you had only to ask and would have saved time and trouble and money and inconvenience in particular to the Court.

Additional negligence and breaches of duty by your clients/defendants

21. Although it hasn’t been referred to in the claim, if your clients insist on going to court, the judge will hear that your clients have failed to comply with their new FCA “Consumer Duty” and preferred to support the dealer against their own customer in the face of overwhelming evidence.

22. It is clear that your clients are motivated by profit and what they take to be the “line of least resistance” rather than taking a customer facing approach and complying with their FCA “Consumer Duty”

23. In fact your clients ignore their “Consumer Duty” so routinely that before the County Court claim was commenced, I was obliged to press them to open an investigation. Under FOS rules they had eight weeks to complete an investigation and then provide a reference to the FOS.

24. Your clients even breached this deadline and failed to communicate with me at all.

25. I eventually was obliged to chase your clients myself after the expiry of the eight week deadline and they then admitted that they did not have any solution and no final response and that if I wanted I should continue to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

26. As you are aware, I have decided to go to the courts.

27. I notice that in your witness statement you seem to suggest that I should have opted to go to the FOS rather than to the courts.

28. I hope you realise that this is rubbish and smacks of either you or your client grasping at straws in order to restore some sense of Face in a situation which the both of you have managed very badly.

29. I have a complete right of access to the County Court and this is what I have done.

30. You had better understand that your clients are only giving you a small part of the story – and the part which suits their purposes.

31. You are being led around by the nose by your clients and now they want to attempt to do the same with the court.

32. I would suggest now that your statement of truth in which you say that you have an honest belief in what you have written simply means that you have honestly rehashed what your clients have told you.

33. I think it would be reasonable to require your clients to attend court and to give evidence on their own behalf rather than the second-hand version which you have provided in your witness statement.

34. You can inform your clients that once this matter is settled in my favour – as it most certainly will be, that a further legal action we brought against them for their failings. For their failure to treat me fairly contrary to FCA regulations and also for their breach of contract in their failure to comply with the FCA Consumer Duty.

35. I expect that you are unaware of this recent FCA regulation .

36. The evidence seems to be that your clients are not aware of the FCA Consumer Duty either, although they have a statutory obligation to be aware of it and to comply.

Your Own Negligence in Dealing with Instructions from Your Client

37. You have admitted that it is your negligence which has exacerbated the problem which began with your clients apparently worried about accessing County Court website.

38. I notice that on your application notice you have made no reference to costs.

39. I consider this to be disingenuous and I am informing you now that unless you agree, I shall be asking the court to award in my favour all the costs which you have wasted including any interest which might be awarded on these wasted costs – you will know this better than me.

40. For the avoidance of doubt, this includes the claim fee, the fee for the application notice, the fee for the failed enforcement – all of which have been incurred because of inactivity by yourself or by your client.

41. In order to save further time and trouble for the court, you might want to respond on this point and let us all know that you do not object.

That You Have a Real Prospect of Success

Whether the Defects Existed at the Point of Sale

[paragraph number] the argument which Jonathan Hall has constructed against the particulars of claim you have never seen focuses only on the issue as to whether or not the defects were present at the point of sale.
[paragraph number] Jonathan Hall does not appear to appreciate that this point affects only the right to reject the vehicle.
There is also the issue of satisfactory quality and for a reasonable period of time which Jonathan Hall seems to have overlooked and which will be dealt with in the next section of this response

42. Jonathan Hall's witness statement is rather chaotic in this respect. You start off by saying that the faults in my vehicle were not present at the point of sale and point of delivery.

43. You later then go on to admit that the Consumer Rights Act provides that any faults which manifest themselves within the first six months are taken to have been present at the point of sale and delivery.

44. You then go on to agree that the above presumption is rebuttable and that if you are allowed to defend that you will adduce expert evidence.

45. Clearly this last assertion is an admission that you do not have evidence to rebut the statutory presumption. This last assertion amounts to an admission that you are hoping to adduce evidence if you are permitted to continue and that you will be employing experts to investigate and that if the experts agree that the faults were not present at the point of sale, you then have a real prospect of success.

46. Effectively what we are hearing here is that you don’t know if you have a real prospect of success at all. You don’t have evidence to support this but you are hoping that you will be able to employ some experts and you are then hoping that they will then find evidence in your favour.

47. All rather speculative – but the main point is that you have signed a statement of truth that you have a real prospect of success – but the truth is that you have no idea – because you have admitted that you don’t have any evidence and furthermore, you have admitted that you don’t even know what the claim is about.

The Vehicle Must Be of Satisfactory Quality and Remain That Way for a Reasonable Period of Time

As has been pointed out above Jonathan Hall's constructed argument overlooks the fact that a purchaser of a vehicle is entitled to have a vehicle which is of satisfactory quality and which will remain that way for a reasonable period of time.
The defendant's clients supplied a vehicle to the claimant which was not satisfactory quality and this became evident very quickly within the first six months of ownership.
The issue of satisfactory quality is not necessarily the same as the issue of whether a particular defect was present at the point of sale.
In this case the vehicle supplied by the defendant's client was so unsatisfactory that it has been undrivable for a substantial period of the claimant's ownership to the extent that it can be said that the claimant has been deprived of substantially of the entire benefit of the contract.
Of course it is quite understandable that Jonathan Hall has not dealt with this point in his witness statement because he has never seen the particulars of claim.

Additional reasons why You Will Not Succeed at Trial

48. Your clients are well aware that there has been a catalogue of serious defects which have been confirmed by various independent inspections.

49. I gather they haven’t told you any of this.

50. Furthermore, not only have I asserted my right to reject which has itself been rejected by the dealer – with the support of your client and in breach of the FCA Consumer Duty and – even though it is I who are their customer, not the dealer, – but also the car has been so faulty that I have been deprived of its use for 84 days out of 121 days of ownership.

51. I have been unable to use the vehicle at all since 24 November until the current date and continuing.

52. The dealership collected the vehicle on 27 December 2023 ostensibly to carry out their own inspection and they have had it in their possession ever since.

53. Did you know this? Have your clients told you this?

54. Of course you know . You must be fully aware of all this because your clients must have told you the whole story and no reasonable solicitor could be confident of their real prospect of success unless they did know the whole story. And you have signed a statement of truth assuring the court of your likely victory if you are permitted to defend.

55. And of course because your clients through their dealership partners have been in possession of my vehicle for almost 2 months, they have had more than ample opportunity to inspect the vehicle and to adduce their own expert evidence.

56. I’m assuming that they haven’t bothered.

57. The reasonable inference is that both your clients and the dealership think that the “line of least resistance” is simply to bludgeon me into giving up and to accepting their serious contractual breaches while at the same time they have the use of my money and I am left without transport.

Conditions for Settlement

58. You advise your clients to accept the rejection, to refund me in full and to cancel all agreements.

59. You agree to pay me at the County Court rate of interest on the value of my claim.

60. Your clients refund me all costs incurred so far. What you want to do about the costs incurred as a result of your own negligence is between you and your client.

61. Any adverse entries relating to me in your clients’ files to be removed within seven days. Your clients to arrange the removal of all adverse data relating to me with any organisation with whom they have shared the data within 14 days. Your clients to inform me within 14 days as to who they have shared my personal data with.

62. In particular, any entries relating to me on any credit reference agency file to be deleted within 14 days.

63. Your clients agree to ensure the deletion of all data relating to me with their used-car dealer partner within 14 days.

64. Your clients to confirm to me in writing and within 21 days that all my requests relating to my personal data have been complied with.

65. All actions – enforcement by me and application notice by you to be stayed until the above points have been complied with after which, the application notice will be permitted to proceed uncontested.

66. The above agreements to be rendered into a Tomlin order drafted by the defendant and all costs to be met by the defendant.

67. In default of full compliance with the above conditions, the judgement will be allowed to stand uncontested and your clients will either settle or else permit enforcement to be carried out without hindrance.

68. This will have the advantage to the defendant of closing the file on this issue. Your clients will not have an embarrassing judgement against them. This agreement will have the advantage to you of sparing you the embarrassment of suffering your role in this matter being discussed in the County Court and of the inevitable criticism by the judge being included in the transcript.

69. The advantage to me clearly will be that I will have my money back and all losses incurred addressed by your client. The matter will be closed. And I can carry on a more experienced and wiser individual.

70. As I have already pointed out, all of this will be shown to the judge.

71. As I have pointed out, you had better think carefully about what you’re doing. I’m happy to go all the way on this. The only compromise I am prepared to make is to spare you and your clients the embarrassment of a judgement and the highlighting of your own negligence role in the saga which seems to correspond broadly with the level of negligence exercised by your clients and also their dealership partner.

72. At the end of the day you should understand that nothing I’m asking for is unreasonable. I’m only trying to get everybody to do properly the job for which they are paid for and which they should have done properly in the first place... You included.

73. You should realise that we have here a remarkable coincidence of haphazard mismanagement:

a. a dealer who supplies defective vehicles and refuses to stand by their consumer obligations,

b. a finance company and which prefers to reinforce their dealership partner’ s failure to enforce consumer obligations and which apparently is too frightened to deal with litigation properly because they are concerned about accessing the claim on the County Court website,

c. and a solicitor who deals with client instructions inefficiently or negligently and who indulges in speculative witness statements without checking the facts.

74. It really seems as if I never had a chance!

75. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am objecting to your application notice. If you happen to succeed then we will go to court unless you offer me everything that I’m asking for anyway.

76. I think the best thing you can do is to start to disassociate your clients and yourself from this action because you won’t win.

77. I suggest that you contact the court and put a hold on the set-aside application and start thinking in a mature and businesslike way about the hole that you and your clients and the dealership have got themselves into – and stop digging.

Statement of truth

BankFodder · February 16

In fact I have found a way to remove the paragraph numbers automatically so here is the text without the paragraph numbers.

Please will you have a look at it. Check it. Amend or subtract and then post it back here in a Microsoft Word file would be the best.

It will be really helpful if you would actually engage with this thread. You don't seem to realise the importance of this.

Quote

Dear Jonathan Hall

Claim Number XXXX

name of case – XXX v XXX company

Please note that I will not be part of any without prejudice obligation in respect of any correspondence generated by me or by yourselves unless you obtain written agreement from me in advance.

For the avoidance of doubt, this means that any correspondence sent by me to you and any correspondence from this date sent by yourselves to me will be made available to the court.

Please also note, that I will not be bound by any unilaterally imposed duties of confidentiality unless you obtain agreement in writing from me in advance.

  I have received a copy of your application notice together with your witness statement which presumably is intended to outline this some of the details of your clients’ defence.

  I notice that your witness statement which contains a signed statement of truth assures the court that you have a real prospect of success if you are permitted to defend.

  However, in your witness statement you admit that you have never seen the particulars of claim and of course this means that you have no idea of the details of the claim for the specifics of the claimant’s complaint.

  In fact at one point in your witness statement you make it clear that your client has requested that you advise them on the general dispute rather than the cause of action contained in the County Court claim form.

  Of course this is not surprising as according to you neither your clients nor yourself have ever seen the claim form and so each of you are simply guessing at the substance of the claim.

  I am at a loss to understand how you can give your word to the court that you have a real prospect of success when you have no idea of what it is you are attempting to succeed against.

  I notice that there was no dispute that your clients were properly served as defendants in the above claim.

  I understand also that your clients did forward details of claim to you and that it was you by your own negligence that the matter was not dealt with correctly and so they did not defend the claim and I obtained a judgement as a result.

  I have attempted to enforce a judgement by instructing High Court Enforcement Officers but it seems that the London office of your client holds no assets and enforcement was impossible.

  I understand now that you are requesting that the judgement be set aside and that you have signed a statement of truth that you believe that if you are allowed to defend, that you have real prospect of success.

Defendants’ Failure to Act Once They Had Received the Claim Documents

  I understand that apparently this powerful and experienced and well-resourced company received claim documents but did not proceed to deal with the matter correctly because apparently they were worried about to accessing the County Court website because they were concerned that they might not be able to gain access a second time.

  This even though they had received sealed official County Court documents notifying them that a claim had been started and giving them an official County Court link in order to access the claim and to deal with it appropriately.

  This is scarcely believable. Even if your clients usually do conduct themselves correctly, it is beyond doubt that they do receive claims for this and that on a recently regular basis.

  It is beyond doubt that their systems and their staff development have already envisaged this kind of communication and that they are trained to deal with it.

  I understand that you are saying that your clients have not obtained a copy of the particulars of claim because they were frightened to log onto the County Court website – despite having received official papers/notification of a claim against them.

  If that is correct that they have not seen a copy of the particulars of claim because they were worried about accessing the County Court website, and if that truly explains why you say that you also have not seen details of the claim, then I am puzzled that your witness statement purports to address and challenge a County Court claim apparently without having seen the claim and being completely unaware of the details of the claim.

  In fact what you have attempted to describe to the court as being the substance of my claim, is nothing more than some imagined construction based on a partial version of a story which you have received from the defendants.

  And I am particularly puzzled as to why you haven’t simply written to me and asked me to supply you with a copy of the particulars rather than jumping in immediately into a procedure which effectively is going to waste money and resources both of yourself, your clients, and most importantly the Court.

  I am fully prepared to provide you with a copy of the particulars of claim if you write to me and ask for it.

  Once again, it would all have been so easy – you had only to ask and would have saved time and trouble and money and inconvenience in particular to the Court.

Additional negligence and breaches of duty by your clients/defendants

  Although it hasn’t been referred to in the claim, if your clients insist on going to court, the judge will hear that your clients have failed to comply with their new FCA “Consumer Duty” and preferred to support the dealer against their own customer in the face of overwhelming evidence.

  It is clear that your clients are motivated by profit and what they take to be the “line of least resistance” rather than taking a customer facing approach and complying with their FCA “Consumer Duty”

  In fact your clients ignore their “Consumer Duty” so routinely that before the County Court claim was commenced, I was obliged to press them to open an investigation. Under FOS rules they had eight weeks to complete an investigation and then provide a reference to the FOS.

  Your clients even breached this deadline and failed to communicate with me at all.

  I eventually was obliged to chase your clients myself after the expiry of the eight week deadline and they then admitted that they did not have any solution and no final response and that if I wanted I should continue to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

  As you are aware, I have decided to go to the courts.

  I notice that in your witness statement you seem to suggest that I should have opted to go to the FOS rather than to the courts.

  I hope you realise that this is rubbish and smacks of either you or your client grasping at straws in order to restore some sense of Face in a situation which the both of you have managed very badly.

  I have a complete right of access to the County Court and this is what I have done.

  You had better understand that your clients are only giving you a small part of the story – and the part which suits their purposes.

  You are being led around by the nose by your clients and now they want to attempt to do the same with the court.

  I would suggest now that your statement of truth in which you say that you have an honest belief in what you have written simply means that you have honestly rehashed what your clients have told you.

  I think it would be reasonable to require your clients to attend court and to give evidence on their own behalf rather than the second-hand version which you have provided in your witness statement.

  You can inform your clients that once this matter is settled in my favour – as it most certainly will be, that a further legal action we brought against them for their failings. For their failure to treat me fairly contrary to FCA regulations and also for their breach of contract in their failure to comply with the FCA Consumer Duty.

  I expect that you are unaware of this recent FCA regulation .

  The evidence seems to be that your clients are not aware of the FCA Consumer Duty either, although they have a statutory obligation to be aware of it and to comply.

Your Own Negligence in Dealing with Instructions from Your Client

  You have admitted that it is your negligence which has exacerbated the problem which began with your clients apparently worried about accessing County Court website.

  I notice that on your application notice you have made no reference to costs.

  I consider this to be disingenuous and I am informing you now that unless you agree, I shall be asking the court to award in my favour all the costs which you have wasted including any interest which might be awarded on these wasted costs – you will know this better than me.

  For the avoidance of doubt, this includes the claim fee, the fee for the application notice, the fee for the failed enforcement – all of which have been incurred because of inactivity by yourself or by your client.

  In order to save further time and trouble for the court, you might want to respond on this point and let us all know that you do not object.

That You Have a Real Prospect of Success

Whether the Defects Existed at the Point of Sale

[paragraph number] the argument which Jonathan Hall has constructed against the particulars of claim you have never seen focuses only on the issue as to whether or not the defects were present at the point of sale.
[paragraph number] Jonathan Hall does not appear to appreciate that this point affects only the right to reject the vehicle.
There is also the issue of satisfactory quality and for a reasonable period of time which Jonathan Hall seems to have overlooked and which will be dealt with in the next section of this response

  Jonathan Hall's witness statement is rather chaotic in this respect. You start off by saying that the faults in my vehicle were not present at the point of sale and point of delivery.

  You later then go on to admit that the Consumer Rights Act provides that any faults which manifest themselves within the first six months are taken to have been present at the point of sale and delivery.

  You then go on to agree that the above presumption is rebuttable and that if you are allowed to defend that you will adduce expert evidence.

  Clearly this last assertion is an admission that you do not have evidence to rebut the statutory presumption. This last assertion amounts to an admission that you are hoping to adduce evidence if you are permitted to continue and that you will be employing experts to investigate and that if the experts agree that the faults were not present at the point of sale, you then have a real prospect of success.

  Effectively what we are hearing here is that you don’t know if you have a real prospect of success at all. You don’t have evidence to support this but you are hoping that you will be able to employ some experts and you are then hoping that they will then find evidence in your favour.

  All rather speculative – but the main point is that you have signed a statement of truth that you have a real prospect of success – but the truth is that you have no idea – because you have admitted that you don’t have any evidence and furthermore, you have admitted that you don’t even know what the claim is about.

The Vehicle Must Be of Satisfactory Quality and Remain That Way for a Reasonable Period of Time

As has been pointed out above Jonathan Hall's constructed argument overlooks the fact that a purchaser of a vehicle is entitled to have a vehicle which is of satisfactory quality and which will remain that way for a reasonable period of time.
The defendant's clients supplied a vehicle to the claimant which was not satisfactory quality and this became evident very quickly within the first six months of ownership.
The issue of satisfactory quality is not necessarily the same as the issue of whether a particular defect was present at the point of sale.
In this case the vehicle supplied by the defendant's client was so unsatisfactory that it has been undrivable for a substantial period of the claimant's ownership to the extent that it can be said that the claimant has been deprived of substantially of the entire benefit of the contract.
Of course it is quite understandable that Jonathan Hall has not dealt with this point in his witness statement because he has never seen the particulars of claim.

Additional reasons why You Will Not Succeed at Trial

  Your clients are well aware that there has been a catalogue of serious defects which have been confirmed by various independent inspections.

  I gather they haven’t told you any of this.

  Furthermore, not only have I asserted my right to reject which has itself been rejected by the dealer – with the support of your client and in breach of the FCA Consumer Duty and – even though it is I who are their customer, not the dealer, – but also the car has been so faulty that I have been deprived of its use for 84 days out of 121 days of ownership.

  I have been unable to use the vehicle at all since 24 November until the current date and continuing.

  The dealership collected the vehicle on 27 December 2023 ostensibly to carry out their own inspection and they have had it in their possession ever since.

  Did you know this? Have your clients told you this?

  Of course you know . You must be fully aware of all this because your clients must have told you the whole story and no reasonable solicitor could be confident of their real prospect of success unless they did know the whole story. And you have signed a statement of truth assuring the court of your likely victory if you are permitted to defend.

  And of course because your clients through their dealership partners have been in possession of my vehicle for almost 2 months, they have had more than ample opportunity to inspect the vehicle and to adduce their own expert evidence.

  I’m assuming that they haven’t bothered.

  The reasonable inference is that both your clients and the dealership think that the “line of least resistance” is simply to bludgeon me into giving up and to accepting their serious contractual breaches while at the same time they have the use of my money and I am left without transport.

Conditions for Settlement

  You advise your clients to accept the rejection, to refund me in full and to cancel all agreements.

  You agree to pay me at the County Court rate of interest on the value of my claim.

  Your clients refund me all costs incurred so far. What you want to do about the costs incurred as a result of your own negligence is between you and your client.

  Any adverse entries relating to me in your clients’ files to be removed within seven days. Your clients to arrange the removal of all adverse data relating to me with any organisation with whom they have shared the data within 14 days. Your clients to inform me within 14 days as to who they have shared my personal data with.

  In particular, any entries relating to me on any credit reference agency file to be deleted within 14 days.

  Your clients agree to ensure the deletion of all data relating to me with their used-car dealer partner within 14 days.

  Your clients to confirm to me in writing and within 21 days that all my requests relating to my personal data have been complied with.

  All actions – enforcement by me and application notice by you to be stayed until the above points have been complied with after which, the application notice will be permitted to proceed uncontested.

  The above agreements to be rendered into a Tomlin order drafted by the defendant and all costs to be met by the defendant.

  In default of full compliance with the above conditions, the judgement will be allowed to stand uncontested and your clients will either settle or else permit enforcement to be carried out without hindrance.

  This will have the advantage to the defendant of closing the file on this issue. Your clients will not have an embarrassing judgement against them. This agreement will have the advantage to you of sparing you the embarrassment of suffering your role in this matter being discussed in the County Court and of the inevitable criticism by the judge being included in the transcript.

  The advantage to me clearly will be that I will have my money back and all losses incurred addressed by your client. The matter will be closed. And I can carry on a more experienced and wiser individual.

  As I have already pointed out, all of this will be shown to the judge.

  As I have pointed out, you had better think carefully about what you’re doing. I’m happy to go all the way on this. The only compromise I am prepared to make is to spare you and your clients the embarrassment of a judgement and the highlighting of your own negligence role in the saga which seems to correspond broadly with the level of negligence exercised by your clients and also their dealership partner.

  At the end of the day you should understand that nothing I’m asking for is unreasonable. I’m only trying to get everybody to do properly the job for which they are paid for and which they should have done properly in the first place... You included.

  You should realise that we have here a remarkable coincidence of haphazard mismanagement:

a. a dealer who supplies defective vehicles and refuses to stand by their consumer obligations,

b. a finance company and which prefers to reinforce their dealership partner’ s failure to enforce consumer obligations and which apparently is too frightened to deal with litigation properly because they are concerned about accessing the claim on the County Court website,

c. and a solicitor who deals with client instructions inefficiently or negligently and who indulges in speculative witness statements without checking the facts.

  It really seems as if I never had a chance!

  If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am objecting to your application notice. If you happen to succeed then we will go to court unless you offer me everything that I’m asking for anyway.

  I think the best thing you can do is to start to disassociate your clients and yourself from this action because you won’t win.

  I suggest that you contact the court and put a hold on the set-aside application and start thinking in a mature and businesslike way about the hole that you and your clients and the dealership have got themselves into – and stop digging.

Statement of truth

shellyh24 · February 16

Trust me i do realize the importance of this

I have no broadband at home currently and I cannot copy and paste super long things on my phone to amend and keep running through it with ease, I can copy it and paste it to my email and spell check which is what i am doing.

Im sorry I am trying my best without the use of my computer currently and i do very much appreciate the help.

I have spoken to Jonathan Hall today via telephone to tell him I am without my computer but I am drafting a response and can he look out for my email which he said yes...

i cant repost as a microsoft word file on my phone... best i can do is just to keep copy and pasting back?

**dx100uk** · February 16

you have a charging lead for your phone.

plug it into your pc and on your phone enable your mobile hotspot to share internet via USB tethering.

BankFodder · February 16

I am sorry that you are having all these difficulties but I'm afraid but when you try to explain this to the finance company or to the courts, it will not cut any ice.

It has been suggested by my site team colleague that you use your telephone as a hotspot and access the internet there.

Better still, if you are using a laptop then take it round to your local Starbucks and sit there for an hour on their internet and sort it out.

Once again, I'm sorry you having these problems but it is causing a great deal of risk for you. You are suing for a considerable amount of money.

And also it is causing a lot of extra work for us.

You may think that this is a tough approach but believe me if you end up losing this case and also having to suffer costs you will probably take a different view of things.

**dx100uk** · February 16

2 hours ago, shellyh24 said:

I have spoken to Jonathan Hall today via telephone

really hope you recorded it.

you shouldn't be crawling to these people.

shellyh24 · February 16

Literally all i said was 'i am currently drafting a response to you, i have had difficulty with my internet, please keep an eye out for a reply shortly' and he said 'thats fine no problem'. As i have taken a while to reply I thought it best to explain so they dont think im ignoring them.

I dont know how to do a hot spot thing. I have a desk top computer at home. if i plug in my phone it comes up saying 'galaxy A53 device found' click to receive files...

Im sorry im really not good with technology, i find it hard to understand instructions that appear complicated to me, i guess thats down to my ADHD?

I have copied and pasted the above letter, i spell checked it and I sent it. I will paste below. I did take out the sentence about enforcement as I never got to send anyone to the London address. That is still pending but applied for...

Dear Jonathan Hall

Claim Number ........

XXXXXX v Startline

Please note that I will not be part of any without prejudice obligation in respect of any correspondence generated by me or by yourselves unless you obtain written agreement from me in advance.

For the avoidance of doubt, this means that any correspondence sent by me to you and any correspondence from this date sent by yourselves to me will be made available to the court.

Please also note, that I will not be bound by any unilaterally imposed duties of confidentiality unless you obtain agreement in writing from me in advance.

I have received a copy of your application notice together with your witness statement which presumably is intended to outline this some of the details of your clients’ defence.

I notice that your witness statement which contains a signed statement of truth assures the court that you have a real prospect of success if you are permitted to defend.

However, in your witness statement you admit that you have never seen the particulars of claim and of course this means that you have no idea of the details of the claim for the specifics of the claimant’s complaint.

In fact at one point in your witness statement you make it clear that your client has requested that you advise them on the general dispute rather than the cause of action contained in the County Court claim form.

Of course this is not surprising as according to you neither your clients nor yourself have ever seen the claim form and so each of you are simply guessing at the substance of the claim.

I am at a loss to understand how you can give your word to the court that you have a real prospect of success when you have no idea of what it is you are attempting to succeed against.

I notice that there was no dispute that your clients were properly served as defendants in the above claim.

I understand also that your clients did forward details of claim to you and that it was you by your own negligence that the matter was not dealt with correctly and so they did not defend the claim and I obtained a judgement as a result.

I understand now that you are requesting that the judgement be set aside and that you have signed a statement of truth that you believe that if you are allowed to defend, that you have real prospect of success.

Defendants’ Failure to Act Once They Had Received the Claim Documents

I understand that apparently this powerful and experienced and well-resourced company received claim documents but did not proceed to deal with the matter correctly because apparently they were worried about to accessing the County Court website because they were concerned that they might not be able to gain access a second time.

This even though they had received sealed official County Court documents notifying them that a claim had been started and giving them an official County Court link in order to access the claim and to deal with it appropriately.

This is scarcely believable. Even if your clients usually do conduct themselves correctly, it is beyond doubt that they do receive claims for this and that on a recently regular basis.

It is beyond doubt that their systems and their staff development have already envisaged this kind of communication and that they are trained to deal with it.

I understand that you are saying that your clients have not obtained a copy of the particulars of claim because they were frightened to log onto the County Court website – despite having received official papers/notification of a claim against them.

If that is correct that they have not seen a copy of the particulars of claim because they were worried about accessing the County Court website, and if that truly explains why you say that you also have not seen details of the claim, then I am puzzled that your witness statement purports to address and challenge a County Court claim apparently without having seen the claim and being completely unaware of the details of the claim.

In fact what you have attempted to describe to the court as being the substance of my claim, is nothing more than some imagined construction based on a partial version of a story which you have received from the defendants.

And I am particularly puzzled as to why you haven’t simply written to me and asked me to supply you with a copy of the particulars rather than jumping in immediately into a procedure which effectively is going to waste money and resources both of yourself, your clients, and most importantly the Court.

I am fully prepared to provide you with a copy of the particulars of claim if you write to me and ask for it.

Once again, it would all have been so easy – you had only to ask and would have saved time and trouble and money and inconvenience in particular to the Court.

Additional negligence and breaches of duty by your clients/defendants

Although it hasn’t been referred to in the claim, if your clients insist on going to court, the judge will hear that your clients have failed to comply with their new FCA “Consumer Duty” and preferred to support the dealer against their own customer in the face of overwhelming evidence.

It is clear that your clients are motivated by profit and what they take to be the “line of least resistance” rather than taking a customer facing approach and complying with their FCA “Consumer Duty”

In fact your clients ignore their “Consumer Duty” so routinely that before the County Court claim was commenced, I was obliged to press them to open an investigation. Under FOS rules they had eight weeks to complete an investigation and then provide a reference to the FOS.

Your clients even breached this deadline and failed to communicate with me at all.

I eventually was obliged to chase your clients myself after the expiry of the eight week deadline and they then admitted that they did not have any solution and no final response and that if I wanted I should continue to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

As you are aware, I have decided to go to the courts.

I notice that in your witness statement you seem to suggest that I should have opted to go to the FOS rather than to the courts.

I hope you realise that this is rubbish and smacks of either you or your client grasping at straws in order to restore some sense of Face in a situation which the both of you have managed very badly.

I have a complete right of access to the County Court and this is what I have done.

You had better understand that your clients are only giving you a small part of the story – and the part which suits their purposes.

You are being led around by the nose by your clients and now they want to attempt to do the same with the court.

I would suggest now that your statement of truth in which you say that you have an honest belief in what you have written simply means that you have honestly rehashed what your clients have told you.

I think it would be reasonable to require your clients to attend court and to give evidence on their own behalf rather than the second-hand version which you have provided in your witness statement.

You can inform your clients that once this matter is settled in my favour – as it most certainly will be, that a further legal action we brought against them for their failings. For their failure to treat me fairly contrary to FCA regulations and also for their breach of contract in their failure to comply with the FCA Consumer Duty.

I expect that you are unaware of this recent FCA regulation .

The evidence seems to be that your clients are not aware of the FCA Consumer Duty either, although they have a statutory obligation to be aware of it and to comply.

Your Own Negligence in Dealing with Instructions from Your Client

You have admitted that it is your negligence which has exacerbated the problem which began with your clients apparently worried about accessing County Court website.

I notice that on your application notice you have made no reference to costs.

I consider this to be disingenuous and I am informing you now that unless you agree, I shall be asking the court to award in my favour all the costs which you have wasted including any interest which might be awarded on these wasted costs – you will know this better than me.

For the avoidance of doubt, this includes the claim fee, the fee for the application notice, the fee for the failed enforcement – all of which have been incurred because of inactivity by yourself or by your client.

In order to save further time and trouble for the court, you might want to respond on this point and let us all know that you do not object.

That You Have a Real Prospect of Success

Whether the Defects Existed at the Point of Sale

The argument which Jonathan Hall has constructed against the particulars of claim you have never seen focuses only on the issue as to whether or not the defects were present at the point of sale.
Jonathan Hall does not appear to appreciate that this point affects only the right to reject the vehicle.
There is also the issue of satisfactory quality and for a reasonable period of time which Jonathan Hall seems to have overlooked and which will be dealt with in the next section of this response

Your witness statement is rather chaotic in this respect. You start off by saying that the faults in my vehicle were not present at the point of sale and point of delivery.

You later then go on to admit that the Consumer Rights Act provides that any faults which manifest themselves within the first six months are taken to have been present at the point of sale and delivery.

You then go on to agree that the above presumption is rebuttable and that if you are allowed to defend that you will adduce expert evidence.

Clearly this last assertion is an admission that you do not have evidence to rebut the statutory presumption. This last assertion amounts to an admission that you are hoping to adduce evidence if you are permitted to continue and that you will be employing experts to investigate and that if the experts agree that the faults were not present at the point of sale, you then have a real prospect of success.

Effectively what we are hearing here is that you don’t know if you have a real prospect of success at all. You don’t have evidence to support this but you are hoping that you will be able to employ some experts and you are then hoping that they will then find evidence in your favour.

All rather speculative – but the main point is that you have signed a statement of truth that you have a real prospect of success – but the truth is that you have no idea – because you have admitted that you don’t have any evidence and furthermore, you have admitted that you don’t even know what the claim is about.

The Vehicle Must Be of Satisfactory Quality and Remain That Way for a Reasonable Period of Time

As has been pointed out above Jonathan Hall's constructed argument overlooks the fact that a purchaser of a vehicle is entitled to have a vehicle which is of satisfactory quality and which will remain that way for a reasonable period of time.
The defendant's clients supplied a vehicle to the claimant which was not satisfactory quality and this became evident very quickly within the first six months of ownership.
The issue of satisfactory quality is not necessarily the same as the issue of whether a particular defect was present at the point of sale.
In this case the vehicle supplied by the defendant's client was so unsatisfactory that it has been undrivable for a substantial period of the claimant's ownership to the extent that it can be said that the claimant has been deprived of substantially of the entire benefit of the contract.
Of course it is quite understandable that Jonathan Hall has not dealt with this point in his witness statement because he has never seen the particulars of claim.

Additional reasons why You Will Not Succeed at Trial

Your clients are well aware that there has been a catalogue of serious defects which have been confirmed by various independent inspections.

I gather they haven’t told you any of this.

Furthermore, not only have I asserted my right to reject which has itself been rejected by the dealer – with the support of your client and in breach of the FCA Consumer Duty and – even though it is I who are their customer, not the dealer, – but also the car has been so faulty that I have been deprived of its use for 84 days out of 123 days of ownership.

I have been unable to use the vehicle at all since 24 November until the current date and continuing.

The dealership collected the vehicle on 27 December 2023 ostensibly to carry out their own inspection and they have had it in their possession ever since.

Did you know this? Have your clients told you this?

Of course you know . You must be fully aware of all this because your clients must have told you the whole story and no reasonable solicitor could be confident of their real prospect of success unless they did know the whole story. And you have signed a statement of truth assuring the court of your likely victory if you are permitted to defend.

And of course because your clients through their dealership partners have been in possession of my vehicle for almost 2 months, they have had more than ample opportunity to inspect the vehicle and to adduce their own expert evidence.

The reasonable inference is that both your clients and the dealership think that the “line of least resistance” is simply to bludgeon me into giving up and to accepting their serious contractual breaches while at the same time they have the use of my money and I am left without transport.

Conditions for Settlement

You advise your clients to accept the rejection, to refund me in full and to cancel all agreements.

You agree to pay me at the County Court rate of interest on the value of my claim.

Your clients refund me all costs incurred so far. What you want to do about the costs incurred as a result of your own negligence is between you and your client.

Any adverse entries relating to me in your clients’ files to be removed within seven days. Your clients to arrange the removal of all adverse data relating to me with any organisation with whom they have shared the data within 14 days. Your clients to inform me within 14 days as to who they have shared my personal data with.

In particular, any entries relating to me on any credit reference agency file to be deleted within 14 days.

Your clients agree to ensure the deletion of all data relating to me with their used-car dealer partner within 14 days.

Your clients to confirm to me in writing and within 21 days that all my requests relating to my personal data have been complied with.

All actions – enforcement by me and application notice by you to be stayed until the above points have been complied with after which, the application notice will be permitted to proceed uncontested.

The above agreements to be rendered into a Tomlin order drafted by the defendant and all costs to be met by the defendant.

In default of full compliance with the above conditions, the judgement will be allowed to stand uncontested and your clients will either settle or else permit enforcement to be carried out without hindrance.

This will have the advantage to the defendant of closing the file on this issue. Your clients will not have an embarrassing judgement against them. This agreement will have the advantage to you of sparing you the embarrassment of suffering your role in this matter being discussed in the County Court and of the inevitable criticism by the judge being included in the transcript.

The advantage to me clearly will be that I will have my money back and all losses incurred addressed by your client. The matter will be closed. And I can carry on a more experienced and wiser individual.

As I have already pointed out, all of this will be shown to the judge.

As I have pointed out, you had better think carefully about what you’re doing. I’m happy to go all the way on this. The only compromise I am prepared to make is to spare you and your clients the embarrassment of a judgement and the highlighting of your own negligence role in the saga which seems to correspond broadly with the level of negligence exercised by your clients and also their dealership partner.

At the end of the day you should understand that nothing I’m asking for is unreasonable. I’m only trying to get everybody to do properly the job for which they are paid for and which they should have done properly in the first place... You included.

You should realise that we have here a remarkable coincidence of haphazard mismanagement:

a. a dealer who supplies defective vehicles and refuses to stand by their consumer obligations,

b. a finance company and which prefers to reinforce their dealership partner’ s failure to enforce consumer obligations and which apparently is too frightened to deal with litigation properly because they are concerned about accessing the claim on the County Court website,

c. and a solicitor who deals with client instructions inefficiently or negligently and who indulges in speculative witness statements without checking the facts.

It really seems as if I never had a chance!

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am objecting to your application notice. If you happen to succeed then we will go to court unless you offer me everything that I’m asking for anyway.

I think the best thing you can do is to start to disassociate your clients and yourself from this action because you won’t win.

I suggest that you contact the court and put a hold on the set-aside application and start thinking in a mature and businesslike way about the hole that you and your clients and the dealership have got themselves into – and stop digging.

Statement of truth

So I sent that approx 5pm today... and at 18:18pm I received a reply... my he is on the ball today...

This was his reply...

Thank you for your email

I will take instructions

In the meantime, could you provide me with a copy of the claim form/particulars of claim

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards

Jonathan Hall Director
Finance Litigation

So of course I attached this and sent it straight back to him.

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