I am a defendant in a small claims case, the pursuer has just filed an incidental application due to their main witness being too ill to attend the upcoming hearing. From the letter I received it states ' ##### for the pursuers respectfully moves the court to discharge the full small claim hearing assigned for #### and assign a fresh diet for a small claim hearing owing to the ill health of one of the pursuers witnesses. This witness was employed by the company pursuing me. This witness completed documetation in their role as an employee which I believe is incorrect. I received this documentation 2 weeks before initial hearing which was adjourned due to lack of sheriffs available on the day. I was looking forward to cross examing this 'evidence/documentation' and witness. Should I oppose the incidental hearing? I assume the pursuer will still have this documentation as part of their evidence, but no witness and may ask for some written statement from this witness in their absence. I am unsure of what to do with this. Any help most appreciated, I am in Scotland if there are any tips from anyone.

Hi, Bit of a complicated one really. Will try to be brief! Ex employer has been trying to recover training costs and other costs from me. I did sign a contract that stated they would recover training costs if I left, so cannot dispute this, though I do dispute the total. The first I knew of it was when I had a Statutory Demand delivered back in July. Have spent the intervening time contacting people, but have run into problems getting straightforward legal advice, as it is technically an employment law issue, but they are using methods more commonly used to recover consumer debt. (as I understand it!) Got free advice from a solicitor who was recommend by a legal forum, who basically said that it was too risky to fight it in court as we only had a 50/50 chance of winning, and that we should just make an offer/ come to an agreement to pay. We do dispute some of the debt but have been advised it is not worth trying to dispute a bit of it, we tried to request receipts for the training but they have refused to produce them, we contacted the training centre to get a rough idea of costs but before they could send us a letter (the staff were initially very helpful) they were contacted by ex-employer and asked to not to contact us or supply any information. So having had this advice we then started trying to start getting some money together to come up with a reasonable offer. Initial offer was roughly 20% of the total (a couple of thousand) plus a monthly sum. This was rejected but they accepted the 20% plus way more a month but we couldn't afford that. Tried to negotiate lower monthly figure but again rejected. We managed to scrape together about 80% of the total and offered that plus a monthly sum, this was again rejected, despite being much higher than the sum previously discussed. Eventually they gave us a deadline and we spent a week frantically trying to get the last thousand. We eventually came back and said that we had most of it and could pay the remainder on a credit card, but they then rejected this as they wanted it to come from one source and would not accept 2 separate payments?? Despite the fact they could have had the money then and there! So we received the notice that they were going for a bankruptcy in the court, and I want to oppose it. In an ideal world I want the court to recognise he is being vindictive (he has done this before to others) but I know it doesn't work like that! (plus I still can't believe that you can bankrupt someone based on an invoice printed on someone's home computer, they have never produced any further documentation and when asked by the solicitor we spoke to sent the same home printed document) So as I understand it I can now oppose it on the grounds that we can pay, and have in fact tried to pay many times. Is this possible? And can anyone help me with the wording of the form, as I have no idea of the correct terminology or even where to start! :/ Thanks for reading.