My TAXI nudged a fence - court papers ***Settled by ADR***

[maybelate]

Hi all, thanks for all the replies.

 

 

LV have paid the claimant in full Andy, minus his £50 excess, which is also why I can't understand how he can be claiming again as this is in his name.

 

 

From the start of this I agreed to pay for the damage I caused,

I went to the door of the house in question and was told by the lady who answered "not to worry as it's rotten anyway"

but I still left my card with her and assured her that I would pay to have the damage repaired.

I am still prepared to do this but the woman's husband obviously figured that he could make some extra cash out of me with this

and he has grossly exaggerated the damage that was caused.

 

A long time after the incident occurred I received some pictures that the sols said had been taken by the claimant claiming to show the damage.

 

 

One of the pictures was of the wooden pane that was damaged and clearly shows that the pane next to the damaged one has been pulled off,

which wasn't the case on the pictures that I took at the time of the incident.

 

 

The claimant wouldn't allow me to send a professional to assess the damage and only provided one quote to have the damage repaired

(which his wife advised me was from a family friend).

 

 

I have all emails that were exchanged, photographic evidence and proof that I offered on several occasions to pay for the repair.

 

My question is how to prepare a defence Andy,

 

 

do I write it down in my own words and attach all evidence with it as I'm a litigant?

and the court stated isn't my nearest one,

should I ask for it to be moved?

[Conniff]

What do you mean? This is a small claim so no legal fees other than the £70.00 claimed.

 

The whole value of the claim is only £433.08.

 

 

Sorry, I just remembered the first page with the 'not expect to receive more than £10,000'.

 

 

If this is the insurer recovering costs, what's the point of having insurance, you might as well go direct to court instead of paying rip-off annual premiums.

They accepted the risk and issued a policy and now want a money in only business with no risk.

[Ganymede]

I've not seen the photograph of the damaged fence, nor am I an expert on what repairs were appropriate or if £237.50 for materials and labour is excessive. These are issues that the OP (or his insurers) can argue either at Court or as part of settlement negotiations.

 

This is a Part 7 claim, just issued via the CCMCC in Salford rather than via MCOL as MCOL wouldn't really be appropriate for this type of claim.

 

As the claim was issued by a law firm I assume that the Claimant has legal cover on his home insurance policy and the law firm has been appointed by the home insurer.

 

The insured and insurer have both lost out financially due to the negligent driving of the OP and ate entitled to recover those losses.

 

Imagine if it was another car the OP hit instead of a fence. It would be the same principle. The insurer will always seek to recover their outlay on vehicle repairs for example against the fault party. Why should a non fault incident be added to the insured's premium when it was the OP's fault? The OP is insured for just this reason so should let them deal with the claim.

 

The only reason Court proceedings were issued is because the OP refused to pay for the damage or allow his insurers to deal with it. Unfortunately, you can't blame the homeowner for that.

[AndyOrch]

The claim is by a litigant Maybelate so it will be transferred to their court.Your defence will be quite simple but I do agree with Ganymede that you should really hand this to your insurance to deal with...that is what you pay insurance for...acknowledge service for now and give it some thought and inquire with your cover if they are prepared to deal with this for you...see what their response is and we can take it from there.

 

Regards

 

Andy

[Ganymede]

Sorry, I just remembered the first page with the 'not expect to receive more than £10,000'.

 

 

If this is the insurer recovering costs, what's the point of having insurance, you might as well go direct to court instead of paying rip-off annual premiums.

They accepted the risk and issued a policy and now want a money in only business with no risk.

 

The insurer has paid out money to fix the fence due to the negligent act of the OP.

 

They can then seek to recover that costs from the OP whose motor insurance would pay if he passed the claim to them.

[Ganymede]

The claim is by a litigant Maybelate so it will be transferred to their court.Your defence will be quite simple but I do agree with Ganymede that you should really hand this to your insurance to deal with...that is what you pay insurance for...acknowledge service for now and give it some thought and inquire with your cover if they are prepared to deal with this for you...see what their response is and we can take it from there.

 

Regards

 

Andy

 

The Defence would probably be along the lines of the OP admits liability for the accident but disputes the extent and cost of repairs I would imagine.

[maybelate]

Hi Andy, the excess on the policy is more than the amount of the claim plus I assume that my premiums will rocket if I go through the insurance. I did not at any point refuse to pay for the damage that I caused Ganymede, but I am not prepared to pay for the claimant to get himself a whole new fence on the back of this. I didn't have to knock on his door when I hit the fence but I am a fair and honest person who chose to.

[Ganymede]

It's a small claim so if you defend it yourself then your exposure to costs is minimal at least.

[maybelate]

yes Ganymede, that's true and I might have to do that (with the help of the lovely people on this sight) as I think that going through my insurance is probably not viable (even though I do have legal cover)

[Ganymede]

Bear in mind that you're probably under an obligation to at the very least inform your insurers of the accident/claim. Check your policy.

[Aretnap]

Your excess is generally only payable when you're claiming for damage to your own vehicle - not for third party claims. At least that's the case with normal car insurance policies. Taxi policies may be different, I don't know for sure, but I'd be surprised if they were.

 

Making a claim through your insurance may well increase your premium, but you are likely obliged to tell them about the accident and that may increase your premium anyway. Many people choose not to tell their insurers if they have a minor accident which they settle with a handful of cash, but now that the homeowner's own insurers are involved (along with courts and lawyers) there are records of the claim floating around which could well come back and bite you one day if you don't tell them. A voided insurance policy is a lot worse than a premium increase.

 

Legal cover on your insurance is irrelevant - it's for recovering your own uninsured losses (your excess, personal injury etc) if you are involved in an accident caused by someone else. It's not for defiending claims brought against you by other driver's - your insurers will do that as a matter of course if they judge that a defence would succeed (and cost less than the claim itself, of course).

[maybelate]

Please let me explain again what happened as I feel that this is getting totally out of hand and that my immediate issue of having to defend this claim is getting pushed aside.

 

On a very sunny day in October 2013 I was turning my car around to leave a road when the sun cought my eye in my mirror and I accidently clipped a fence belonging to the claimant. I knocked on the door of the house and the lady who was in came with me to inspect the damage and told me "oh don't worry about it, it's rotten anyway". Even though this was the case I gave the lady my card with my contact details on, took her details and told her that I would get the fence pane (1 small piece of wood approx. 6ft high and 8" wide) replaced. She was happy with this and I left the property. A couple of days later I started to receive emails from someone claiming to be the husband of the lady who I had previously made this agreement with, stating that I had caused extensive damage to his fence and demanding my insurance details.

 

If the owner of the property had been honest and realistic about this the repair would have cost no more than £50, as the pane of wood broke off from about a quarter of the way up (partly because it was rotten), but the claimant and his representatives have since blown this grossly out of proportion in order to benefit financially from this incident.

 

I don't believe that anyone in my position, who had come to an arrangement with the owner to have the damage repaired and genuinally believed that it would cost such a small amount of money would have put this through their insurance, and rightly or wrongly I chose to sort this out myself without involving my insurance back in 2013.

 

The above said I now feel that going through my insurance company at this stage is not an option. I understand that maybe I should have reported the incident to the insurance at the time but I took advice from various sources and decided not to.

 

So, I could pay the claim which I feel has been grossly over inflated and exaggerated but as a matter of principle I think that I need to put my side of the story across to the court. The claimant refused my offers to repair the damage on several occasions, he refused to allow an independent professional access to his property to assess the damage, he has pulled one of the fence pane's off since the incident and claims that the accident caused the damage (but I have a photo showing the pane in place at the time of the incident), he only provided one quote to have the repair carried out (from a friend of his family) and I feel that he has acted dishonestly all through this process.

 

As stated many times previously, I am more than prepared to pay for the damage that I caused, but don't believe that I should pay the claimant more than he is entitled to and I don't believe that the claimant's representatives should benefit from this incident.

 

So pleeeeease will someone help me to prepare the defence

 

Thanks for reading

Maybelate

[Ganymede]

All the stuff about it being a sunny day etc is irrelevant as you can't dispute liability.

 

What you can do in your Defence is to dispute the extent of the damage and cost of repairs using the evidence you have to see if you can convince the Court that £237.50 isn't reasonable to repair the damage you caused.

[Vauban]

Presumably you will also want to show evidence that you tried to settle this matter before court. Because you are potentially liable for the other side's court fee costs if you lose (which will be about £150 I guess?).

[maybelate]

I am going to defend the amount that is being claimed, I do have evidence to show that I tried to settle this matter before it got to court. Do I fill in N9B and the acknowledgement of service Andy, and can I ask for 28 days to prepare the defence or do I only have 14?

[lookinforinfo]

Maybelate, if all they are now asking for is £237 odd you would probably be better to pay up.

If you ring up a wood merchant and ask for them to deliver a 6ft panlel and probably a couple of posts to secure the panel and then arrange another

guy to come, dig out the existing posts and dispose of them after fixing the fence, the price, depending on your location, may not be toounadjacent to

the amount you are being charged.

EG I fence £20 plus 2 fence posts £10 plus delivery £10 plus vat £8 =£48. Disposal of old fence and posts and Council commercial dump £40? plus 1 days labour £100. Total £188'.

Of course he could do it all himself and burn the wood which would put the cost back to £50 or so. I suggest that

you get your own man to look at the fence and give you a price to do the job and see how they compare. Then you may have something to argue

more positively with.

I can understand that for such a small amount you would not want to involve your Insurance company to settle it as I understand that Hire and Reward Insurance is expensive enough without a claim going in.

[f16]

Maybelate, if all they are now asking for is £237 odd you would probably be better to pay up.

If you ring up a wood merchant and ask for them to deliver a 6ft panlel and probably a couple of posts to secure the panel and then arrange another

guy to come, dig out the existing posts and dispose of them after fixing the fence, the price, depending on your location, may not be toounadjacent to

the amount you are being charged.

EG I fence £20 plus 2 fence posts £10 plus delivery £10 plus vat £8 =£48. Disposal of old fence and posts and Council commercial dump £40? plus 1 days labour £100. Total £188'.

Of course he could do it all himself and burn the wood which would put the cost back to £50 or so. I suggest that

you get your own man to look at the fence and give you a price to do the job and see how they compare. Then you may have something to argue

more positively with.

I can understand that for such a small amount you would not want to involve your Insurance company to settle it as I understand that Hire and Reward Insurance is expensive enough without a claim going in.

 

You can add ballast and cement on to that plus fixings (screws / nails )

Sound advice.

[Conniff]

Mention these 'fake' court papers in your defence.

[maybelate]

yes I will conniff, I'll also mention that I've reported LD to the SRA for their bullying tactics, which is now being investigated.

[Ganymede]

I'll also mention that I've reported LD to the SRA for their bullying tactics, which is now being investigated.

I wouldn't. It's totally irrelevant to your Defence.

[maybelate]

even the fake court papers Ganymede?

[Ganymede]

I wouldn't be throwing the word "fake" around in your Defence personally as they weren't, they were a draft of a genuine claim form.

 

You have no legal defence to the claim.

 

All you can do is try and argue that the costs of repairs are excessive etc.

[maybelate]

ok, thanks Ganymede

[maybelate]

my defence to this will be that the amount for the repair has been exaggerated and it wasn't the claimant's aim to have his fence repaired as I offered this on several occasions and my offers were rejected. He even refused to allow access to the property for an independent professional to assess the damage.

[Aretnap]

I would take Ganymede's advice. The questions the court has to decide are essentially (1) how much damage did you actually do to the fence and (2) whether £237 is a reasonable cost for repairing that damage. Stick to points which are actually relevant to those questions. If you start using your defence to complain about getting nasty letter from the other party's solicitor you' just distract attention from the points which really matter.