court papers from wedding venue/Counterclaim Made & Won!

[sparkycpu]

Hi all,

 

i have just received court papers from the wedding venue i used, they are taking me to court for not paying the full amount of the invoice, the venue made a couple of mistakes in the day concerning food a drink but the biggest problem being our hot finger buffet in the evening, i was told i would be getting hot sausages chicken wings etc and they ended up serving sweet and sour chicken and rice some beef in sauce thing also with rice and some pasta salad, after going in to raise my dispute over the invoice i got a revised one minus £300 also the managers apologies that it was all her fault as she had misworded directions to the kitchen... the evening reception cost was £1500 which they had reduced to £1200 after my complaint, i wrote again saying this amount was not acceptable and that i would be only paying £900 as lots of my guests did not eat in the evening as they only wanted to pick at food (the hot finger buffet) not only that there was nothing for vegies and kids... they banked cheque and i heard nowt until just over 3 weeks later when they said still waiting for money..... we have written again saying that is all we are paying they are now taking me to court for the 300 i didnt pay....

 

i hopefully have a defense as i didnt get what i ordered.... but do i have any chance of a counter claim for breech of contract, ruining evening etc and all the stress and bad memories this has left of our wedding day.....

 

any advise would be greatly accepted as need to reply to court and CAB sat on fence and wouldnt tell me, and a solicitor said not worth my while not enough money in it.....

[GuidoT]

Welcome to CAG.

 

Difficult to quantify losses arising from ruining evening, stress etc and in any event generally these are not valid heads of damage for breach.

 

I suppose your starting point should be to think about how the £1,500.00 breaks down and then consider the parts that were okay and then adjust for the parts that you were unsatisfied with and see what that comes to.

 

Clearly you are in a strong position as they have admitted liability, but they have given a credit of £300 and you need to weigh up if that is sufficient.

[raydetinu]

yep you need to look at the food part of the total cost of the reception and its proportion of the whole bill.

If vegetarian meals was requested and snacks for children etc was part of the deal and they have offered you £300 reduction, but £300 from what! if that represents say a 50% reduction on the food part, not bad result!

 

Anyway I would try offering to split the difference and offer £150 and see what they say.

[sparkycpu]

Hi thanks for the comments,

 

the cost of the evening reception was £1500 this is for heating lighting etc and food, they state in a response letter it also covers venue hire but in a previous email it says there is no hire charge for the evening reception room, now i saw 4/5 staff plus allow for heating and lighting etc does that seem to equate to £1200 because it doesnt to me, regardless of what it amounts to along with other things in the day, serving and charging me for wine and pimms as celebration drinks, when we only asked for wine,we were taken out for photos and found out when i entered bar 50 mins later and i told them to stop serving the pimms the response was people were asking for it.... the rude staff member who made me leave the top table to find the organiser because the children under 3 years old had not been served any food at the main meal, and also staff seen taking bowls of food from the evening buffet by my guests and to top it all they overcharged us for the table wine and toasting wine, the first excuse being it says on my quote they change supplier in oct/nov and prices may change, it doesnt say this anywhere and my quote was sent in feb way after any wine change would have happened, when i told them this i was then told it was down to a tax increase on wine, but i thought that they cannot change the price from my quote unless they notify me first, that didnt happen either... every email i have had from them has also started with an apology about the delay, or we just realised we havent responded to your email, or the best one they misplaced my notes and couldnt find them....... all this from a proffesional company which does weddings all all the time.....sorry if i didnt explain any of this ealier but the reception food was the proverbial straw and the biggest mistake of the day which is why i was concentrating on that...

 

anyway nuff said any more comments would be gratefully recieved, many thanks..

[sparkycpu]

sry one other thing am i correct in thinking that the small claims court can allow compensation for the distress caused at ruined weddings and some other special occasions, im sure i read it in a post on here somewhere...

[GuidoT]

I do not believe this to be the case, although I welcome someone correcting me on this.

[Lula]

To be fair, I would hardly say that the wedding was ruined, I would concentrate on listing the mistakes and the overcharging and the mistakes with the quote and leave it at that.

[sparkycpu]

To be fair, I would hardly say that the wedding was ruined,

 

that unfortunatly is your point of view, and all are welcome, but we will never get our long planned and and long awaited and well payed for "perfect day" back, yet they can still have the have the money....

[legalpickle]

sry one other thing am i correct in thinking that the small claims court can allow compensation for the distress caused at ruined weddings and some other special occasions, im sure i read it in a post on here somewhere...

 

 

There is - to the best of my knowledge - nowhere in the law that states that compensation is payable for such matters.

 

Compensation for injury to feelings - again, to the best of my knowledge and I welcome somebody to correct me if I'm wrong together with links to evidence - is only payable where it is specified in Law. One example is Disability Discrimination.

[legalpickle]

Like GuidoT & raydetinu say, you can only claim for the service that was not provided.

 

I am sure that you are really distressed that your special night didn't go the way you want and I sympathize with that, but you will have to assess that the court may side with Lula's view, in which case you may lose.

 

A Solicitor would not take on such a case as it's small claims and therefore they are extremely unlikely to get costs against the Claimant even if you win. It would therefore not be cost effective for you to retain a Solicitor in such a case, most likely it would end up costing you more than the value of the claim.

 

A few questions, so that I can try and better help:

1. I assume you received an invoice. How much was the billed amount?

2. How much did you pay? Did they cash the cheque?

3. How much are they claiming? How do they claim it is broken down?

4. Please break down the invoice by amounts for us, marking next to each figure whether or not that service was provided, if it was replaced with another service then describe that service [for example chicken instead of meat].

 

What I will then attempt to do is make a recommendation on what I feel is a correct amount and attempt to assist you to formulate a defence.

 

To assist me and others, please try and write clearly. It is difficult to understand a long paragraph of text all in lowercase with no punctuation other than the occasional sets of dots.

 

When did you receive the claim form? When was it issued? I ask these two questions to know how long we have.

 

You can fill in an Acknowledgement of Service - if you haven't done so already - which will give you an added 14 days, i.e. a total of 28 days within which to file a defence. You can download the form at http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/courtfinder/forms/n9_0406.pdf

 

I recommend not filling in the printed forms that the court sends you but filling them in on your computer with the forms downloaded from HM Court Service website, as this makes things a lot clearer and - I know for me - easier. My handwriting is horrendous, so any other party and the court probably appreciate when I type things

 

The advantage with them is that they can be filled in within the Adobe Acrobat Reader file - though they can't be saved - in every space, literally. You can tick the boxes and even at the bottom of most forms where it says "The court office at", you can click right after that and fill in the court's address. It is recommended to fill in the whole form.

 

Others may disagree with me here, and I am open to that, but in the interests of cooperation, I always recommend that one serves a copy of every document they file with the court with the other party. For example with the defence, you can depend on the court to send a copy, but if you send a copy who knows, the claim may be settled sooner, rather than later.

 

When you have filed the defence, the claim will be transferred to your local County Court, as you are an individual, for the rest of the proceedings. Both you and the Claimant will be sent one of two Allocation Questionnaires. There is one that is for claims of - I think - below £500 [yes, I know small claims limit is £5,000, but the courts seem to send the full AQ even for claims of £900 in my experience] which is a short version or another full version. You will have to fill this in and file it at the court office. If the Claimant is claiming between £1,500 and £5,000, they will have to pay £35 when filing their AQ which will be added to the total amount they recover if they win.

 

If you have a defence I'm sure you'll win.

 

Please keep us posted whatever you do, even if you don't utilize my and others help.

 

I and I'm sure others will do their utmost to help you and with your cooperation we will succeed.

 

If you feel that my or anybody else's post has been useful, please click the scales that are in the middle of the 3 icons in the bottom right of the box to the right of our posts with our usernames in. Please write in the box any comment and also your username, so that we know it's you that is posting the feedback. Hopefully you will grow into being part of the CAG community and assist others with your knowledge and get lots of feedback as well.

 

Good Luck!

[sparkycpu]

many thanks, sorry i will try to write more clearly force of habit writing on msn.

 

to answer your questions

 

1 Remaining amount after deduction of deposit £ 2393

 

I complained as above,

 

Revised invoice £ 2093

 

2 I paid £ 1795

 

yes the cheque was cashed within a couple of days

 

3 They are claiming £ 298 plus £ 30 court costs

 

They havent broken it down, just put unpaid balance

 

4 Wedding Ceremony £300 provided

 

Celebration Drinks

Pimms £15 per jug Qty 14 jugs £210 did not ask for this

Sparkly Wine £17.60 Qty 8 bottles £140 meant to be glass and half per person

Juice £5.95 per jug Qty 6 jugs £35.70

 

Wedding Meal Adult £2310 provided

Wedding Meal Child £440 provided

Upto 3 years old foc didnt arrive until i complained

 

Table Wine £11.90 Qty 27 £321.30 Quote says £11.50

 

Toasting Wine £19.60 Qty 12 £235.20 Quote says £18.80

 

Evening Reception

Hot Wedding Buffet £1200 reduced from £1500 after original complaint supposed to be Hot Finger Buffet consisting of:

 

sausages, chicken wings, potatoe skins, etc

 

We got:

 

sweet & sour chicken with rice, beef in some sauce with rice, and a pasta salad.

 

I received my claim form on Friday 29th August and will be sending my acknowledement of service today 3rd Sept

 

Hope this covers your Questions, and thanks again I will take any advice you have to offer

[sparkycpu]

Hi all found this written by a DJ, I know the heading says Holidays but read the first paragraph under his picture, it mentions claiming for distress caused concerning Holidays and WEDDINGS.

 

Holidays – a complainer's guide - Times Online

[raydetinu]

I think you have a case and I would defend any claim in court, but get prepared in a logical chronological way as you have listed.

Did you put any of this in writing when you received their invoice, this would and weight to your defence.

But as I said if you dont fancy going to court, try to negotiate.

Best of luck.

[legalpickle]

Hi all found this written by a DJ, I know the heading says Holidays but read the first paragraph under his picture, it mentions claiming for distress caused concerning Holidays and WEDDINGS.

 

Holidays – a complainer's guide - Times Online

 

I've looked further into the matter. In accordance with Farley v. Skinner [2001] UKHL 49 and Watts v. Morrow [1991] 1 WLR 1421 compensation is claimable for distress, upset and inconvenience where enjoyment and satisfaction are understood to be part of the contract, and the distress, upset and inconvenience arise out of the breach of contract.

 

So yes, I stand corrected, you are allowed to claim compensation for such damages.

Edited September 3, 2008 by legalpickle

[legalpickle]

many thanks, sorry i will try to write more clearly force of habit writing on msn.

 

to answer your questions

 

1 Remaining amount after deduction of deposit £ 2393

 

I complained as above,

 

Revised invoice £ 2093

 

2 I paid £ 1795

 

yes the cheque was cashed within a couple of days

 

3 They are claiming £ 298 plus £ 30 court costs

 

They havent broken it down, just put unpaid balance

 

4 Wedding Ceremony £300 provided

 

Celebration Drinks

Pimms £15 per jug Qty 14 jugs £210 did not ask for this

Sparkly Wine £17.60 Qty 8 bottles £140 meant to be glass and half per person

Juice £5.95 per jug Qty 6 jugs £35.70

 

Wedding Meal Adult £2310 provided

Wedding Meal Child £440 provided

Upto 3 years old foc didnt arrive until i complained

 

Table Wine £11.90 Qty 27 £321.30 Quote says £11.50

 

Toasting Wine £19.60 Qty 12 £235.20 Quote says £18.80

 

Evening Reception

Hot Wedding Buffet £1200 reduced from £1500 after original complaint supposed to be Hot Finger Buffet consisting of:

 

sausages, chicken wings, potatoe skins, etc

 

We got:

 

sweet & sour chicken with rice, beef in some sauce with rice, and a pasta salad.

 

I received my claim form on Friday 29th August and will be sending my acknowledement of service today 3rd Sept

 

Hope this covers your Questions, and thanks again I will take any advice you have to offer

 

Ok.

 

1. When you send copies to the Defendant always send a short cover letter, with their address, stating something to the effect of "Dear Sirs, Please find attached my which has today been sent for filing to County Court in relation to claim number of vs. . Sincerely, .

 

2. How much was the deposit?

 

3. Please can you put the amounts in an Excel spreadsheet including what was quoted for. You agreed to the quote, they did not provide it, so this is very relevant to compare the quote to the invoice. You can attach the spreadsheet to your post when you respond. This will make it clearer so I - and others - can directly compare the services. Please also don't put any "etc" in - all that was provided is relevant. For example chicken is cheaper than meat and generally accepted as not as enjoyable. I assume you have a copy of both the quotation & invoice?

 

4. With your cheque, did you write something to the effect of "Cashing this cheque will signal your acceptance to this amount in full and final settlement of your invoice."? If you did, whilst I'm not sure whether in law that can stop them from claiming more, it should help.

 

What I want to do is directly correlate the figures to calculate how much they should be due and how much should be deducted for distress and inconvenience.

 

Also, where are they based and where do you live? I am asking for the distance between you, not necessarily the places. Because for a claim of under £300 they'll end up paying £55 [£25 for the hearing fee] if it goes to court, and whilst they won't be obligated to travel to the hearing [they can in accordance with CPR 27.9 notify you and the court that they are not showing up], my experience is that not showing up to a hearing works to the persons detriment. So, if say you are in Manchester and they are in London, then it surely won't be cost effective to attend the hearing and because they are not obliged to I doubt they'd get travel costs or costs for representation if they made such a long distance travel or hired a Solicitor.

 

On the claim form will be their address at the top of the claim form and on the bottom of the second page the address to where to send documents. If they have a Solicitor acting for them, these will be different. Make sure to always send the documents to the address at the bottom of the second page, unless they send you a letter advising of a new Solicitor [Notice of Acting] or change of address - in which case send documents to the new address.

 

If my calculations show that you have overpaid and you are convinced of those, and I mean overpaid even with the £1,795 plus deposit, would you issue a counterclaim for a larger discount, or would you leave it as is, being happy with having their claim ruled in your favour?

If you make a counterclaim you would also have to pay the issue fee and hearing fee [yes, despite the fact that the hearing would be one and the same, the courts get away with claiming two hearing fees! Unfair, I know!]

[GuidoT]

I have not looked at the judgements, but for ease they are here:

 

Farley

 

Watts

[legalpickle]

I have not looked at the judgements, but for ease they are here:

 

Farley

 

Watts

 

 

Thanks GuidoT. I got them with comments from somewhere else, but never had the original judgments.

 

Just to clarify, both these cases were for compensation for distress on the basis of a negligent surveryor's survey of property's that the Claimant's bought. The rulings were that the surveyor's were liable for the distress caused to the Claimant's as when one buys a house, one expects enjoyment and satisfaction, so it arose out of the contract as they would not have bought the properties had the surveyor's made correct estimates.

 

In at least Farley the judge mentions weddings in the same category, and I believe the same in Watts.

 

Because the amount of weddings that cost the same as a house are small, the amount of claims that have gone to the High Court, Court of Appeal or House Lords for such claims would be extremely few if any. I have no doubt that many have gone to County Court, but as dealt with in another thread unless there is a transcript or law report of a claim in County Court it cannot even be used as a 'persuasive precedent'.

 

If anybody here has an up to date subscription to Lawtel, I'd be interested to know if there are any transcripts or law reports of compensation for wedding issues.

[sparkycpu]

Hi legalpickle,

 

to answer your latest points,

 

1 Ok i will do this with all future correspondences

 

2 The deposit was for £3100

 

3 I will work on this asap and get it posted, with regard to the "etc" for other items in our hot finger buffet, we had a meeting at the venue and that is how it was put to us, we took this as meaning other food of a similer sort ie quiche, sausage rolls "etc".

 

On our quotation it just states hot finger buffet, not what actual food was being supplied. My now Wife and I were both at the above meeting and can remember what was said regarding the content, I hope this will be good enough.

 

4 Unfortunately not:cry: I only found out about "full and final payment" as the situation continued.

 

I have read up on the cashing of cheques when an account is in dispute, and from my understanding the fact they cashed it straight away, and did not contact me within 2/3 days, intead they left it 3 weeks, this would amount to their acceptance of the amount i sent.

 

I did state the above in a follow up letter to them, but she claims she was on holiday and it was banked as a matter of course.

 

With regard to distance, the venue is within 4 miles of my door, GOOD publicity for them

 

There is not a solicitors name on the claim form and the address is the venues.

 

With regard to a counterclaim, I would like to issue one just as a big fat stuff you, but if the figure i paid seems about right i would be happy with just a ruling in my favour

[jonnythehorse]

To be fair, I would hardly say that the wedding was ruined,

 

that unfortunatly is your point of view, and all are welcome, but we will never get our long planned and and long awaited and well payed for "perfect day" back, yet they can still have the have the money....

 

if all your worried about is the grub on yer big day then why get married ? you gotta realise its the marriage not the food that makes the day special, the best man drunk making a speech all yer mates having beer and a laugh, and if any of ya mates complained about the do then they aint real mates, last thing on my mind was finger food

[legalpickle]

1 Ok i will do this with all future correspondences

 

The reason I say this - I thought I had written the reason below, but I just noticed I hadn't - is because from another thread on CAG and from hearing from a few people, sometimes when the other party receives a document and they don't realize who it's from, they act on the basis of that document when they shouldn't because it's from the Claimant or Defendant as opposed to the court and that causes problems.

 

2 The deposit was for £3100

This would have been part of the whole amount in the quotation and either an invoice for the deposit or an invoice at the end for the whole amount. Please also post this breakdown in the Excel sheet.

 

On our quotation it just states hot finger buffet, not what actual food was being supplied. My now Wife and I were both at the above meeting and can remember what was said regarding the content, I hope this will be good enough.

Providing your wife's witness statement - and witness statements of anybody else at the wedding, that you may be able to obtain at a later stage - support your arguments but are worded calm enough, this shouldn't be a problem.

4 Unfortunately not:cry: I only found out about "full and final payment" as the situation continued.

 

I have read up on the cashing of cheques when an account is in dispute, and from my understanding the fact they cashed it straight away, and did not contact me within 2/3 days, intead they left it 3 weeks, this would amount to their acceptance of the amount i sent.

I do agree that this is relevant. Whilst it may not mean they lose, it should help you.

 

I did state the above in a follow up letter to them, but she claims she was on holiday and it was banked as a matter of course.

Yeah, she was on holiday spending your hard earned dough and now we're going to make sure she doesn't get any more holidays for the next year or two and you with your wife get a nice big honeymoon

With regard to distance, the venue is within 4 miles of my door, GOOD publicity for them

There is not a solicitors name on the claim form and the address is the venues.

Excellent. Means they're getting personal with this and are likely to make a slip up because they most likely have no assistance!

With regard to a counterclaim, I would like to issue one just as a big fat stuff you, but if the figure i paid seems about right i would be happy with just a ruling in my favour

Was hoping you'd say that! We'll see what we can do If you do prepare this, it would most likely be for a sum below £300 or below £500 which would mean an issue fee of £30 or £45 and a hearing fee of £25 or £50 respectively, which would be refunded if the case is settled and the court notified of the settlement 7 days or more prior to the hearing. You would have to be prepared that you may lose this.

 

I am not a Solicitor. I am experienced in small claims from my job and thanks to the help I have received from others on this forum and mainly in my personal life with similar issues when I returned to England 4 years ago, I am returning the favours by trying to help others who are in similar situations. However, you must consider all my advice before you proceed on it and if you have doubts you should seek independent advice. I am not liable if something does go wrong. Generally this is the same disclaimer given by everybody in this and other helpful forums. Most of us do our best to help for completely zilch. I have to make this disclaimer before we go to deep into things, so that you are fully aware of what is going on.

 

Because this help is completely voluntary, I respectfully request that you respond to questions within a couple of days maximum or at least leave several days - preferably as long as possible - for us to respond, because most of us do have other lives and wouldn't want you to be in a position of no responses and desperately needing to do something within 2 days. Whilst we will all do our best to help in such emergency scenarios the more help you can give us to make sure that this doesn't happen would be appreciated and benefit you at the end of the day.

 

We also don't commit to continue to help. Whilst I will do my utmost to continue to help right the way through the end, I can't predict my own life and at the moment a lot in my life is up in the air, and there is no contractual relationship between us. This is another reason you should please give us as much time as possible to respond to posts, because if it transpires we are unavailable, you should have time to obtain other advice without getting into problems.

 

I sincerely hope that none of these disclaimers will be necessary at the end of the case and you will win all that is rightfully yours and show them who the king is but I am obligated to make this disclaimer so that you are aware of everything from the start.

 

One of my annoying habits is to always try and be thorough - sometimes too thorough - as it's my experience that has caused me to try and err on the side of caution, on the basis of the theory "better safe than sorry".

Edited September 10, 2008 by legalpickle

[legalpickle]

 

if all your worried about is the grub on yer big day then why get married ? you gotta realise its the marriage not the food that makes the day special, the best man drunk making a speech all yer mates having beer and a laugh, and if any of ya mates complained about the do then they aint real mates, last thing on my mind was finger food

 

Jonny: I understand your views but with all due respect, this was not your wedding so you cannot criticize till you have been in the same situation you have no right to criticize. CAG is a helpful community and is built by people who help without any reward whatsoever, not people who unhelpfully criticize without being able to feel for the OP.

 

You are of course entitled to your opinion, but if it is unhelpful, I would make a personal request that you resist making such a post.

Edited September 10, 2008 by legalpickle

[patdavies]

Pimms £15 per jug Qty 14 jugs £210 did not ask for this

Sparkly Wine £17.60 Qty 8 bottles £140 meant to be glass and half per person

Juice £5.95 per jug Qty 6 jugs £35.70

 

How many guest did you have, because this does not compute?

 

There are 6 glasses of wine in a bottle so 8 bottles is 6 x 8 = 42 glasses. At 1.5 glasses/head that is 28 guests.

 

Which also means that they each consumed half a jug of Pimms on average.

 

Coming back to the Pimms if you did not agree to this up front and their excuse is that "guests asked for it", then it is for them to chase those guests for payment. Your guests cannot enter into a contract on your behalf.

[sparkycpu]

patdavies

 

there was around 95 people but when you consider children, babies, and drivers the rest must have had one or two drinks each, some even went to the bar and just had a beer!

 

jonnythehorse

 

as legalpickle says you are entitled to your opinion, but I persanally see it that is the whole day that makes it special, which includes my guests enjoying the food and drink i have layed on for them, not having to leave early to get there children something to eat.

[sparkycpu]

sry legalpickle got that wrong i cant seem to attach my excel sheet

[legalpickle]

For some reason attachments are disabled on this thread.

 

Can a Mod please help???

 

 

Sparky: I'll PM a mod for you, and send a copy of the PM to you.