court on 17th August! How do u get stay lifted for hardship case?

[moggieb]

Hi, there

 

When my son received his Notice of Allocation and Directions from the court he was only asked to file & serve a witness statement before the hearing-no bundle required. Hope this is a good sign!! Good luck for tomorrow.

[mikeyb101]

Ah another Wolves case! Haven't got my court date yet but I'll keep an eye on this thread. Good luck for tomorrow!

[SarahApples]

Speaking on behalf of your boyfriend should be fine.

The Judge will lead you and ask you if you have anything to say at each stage. Don't forget ( as I did when I wrote up my Court Hearing yesterday! ) We are the CLAIMANTS - we are taking the bank to court not the other way round and we are the wronged party - the JUdge is on our side.

Good Luck and let us know how you get on! You'll be fine!

Sarah Apples

[starprincess]

Went to court this morning, the case was stayed but it was an interesting experience!

 

We were there in plenty of time and prior to the 10am appointment the barclays barrister introduced himself and advised he would be asking for a stay and asked how we felt about that. We said we would be opposing it, of course! He seemed a bit shocked as he hadn't had a case opposed until now!

 

The HSBC barrister did the same with the HSBC claimant but she didn't say she was going to oppose it and just ranted a bit about how she was annoyed with it all.

 

Although our appointment was at 10am, by 10.45am we still had not been seen. The Barclays barrister was getting very frustrated as it appeared he had to be somewhere else and was making lots of frantic phone calls. He asked the usher if we could be seen next as he had to be elsewhere. Just as i thought our luck was in and he was going to bugger off, the usher said she would bring our case ahead of a few others so he could oppose the objection. Gutted!

 

The HSBC claimant went in first and she seemed a little unprepared, no bundle or documents at all. 15 minutes later she came out looking a bit shaken and looked at us and said, "You've got no chance!" Great! I thought, but wasn't going to panic as i knew we were very, if not over prepared.

 

We were called in and sat round the table with the Judge. My boyfriend asked if i could speak on his behalf (as its his case) and the judge said this was fine.

 

The judge complimented me on the bundle and asked if I had a legal background! (Thanks to the ppl that compiled the majority of the bundle!) He said it has obviously been well researched. He talked about the OFT announcment then asked on what grounds i would be opposing the stay (by this point the barrister hadn't even asked for the stay!) I explained some of the points and gave him the letter from this site, edited a little to our circumstances.

 

He only read the headings of each section and the final part entitiled something like "In the Alternative" and asked the barrister on this part. The barrister referred to the Data Protection Act a lot (don't know what the relevance to that is). The Judge said its a good arguement for a stay but common sense must overide it, together with the instructions he had recieved from the high court to stay all claims. I replied by saying that in cases of financial hardship a hearing should be given but he referred to the "common sense" of letting the test case run its case. I very much got the impression he didn't want to go against the grain. He was a nice enough chap but had made his decision before we even entered the room. In all the excitement i forgot to ask for charges for the day? Is it too late or can i still do this?

 

Judge said case will be stayed until January 2008 and a further court date will arrive in the post within 7 days.

 

Lessons learned:

 

1) Its the luck of the draw

2) Don't be scared of the barristers

3) Judges are just ordinary people

[moggieb]

Hi SP-bad luck on the stay. Was it Judge Ellery? He's hearing my case in September.

[livelylad]

7 threads merged and thread title changed

 

please keep to the one thread when asking questions or updating .This is in your own interest as you will get much more informed advice when people can see at a glance what you have done so far