Re: Please help. I am being sued through a court. How do I respond?
- From: "The Todal" <deadmailbox@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:02:58 +0100
"Howie" <to.reply.pls.see.sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:35jph3logjh2jn0vt3r19tb6nmmbjp4mn3@xxxxxxxxxx
On Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:46:55 +0100, "The Todal"
<deadmailbox@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
|
|And that this discharged you from your liability to perform your part of
the
|contract. Could be a tricky legal argument. For that sort of money, it
would
|be best to get legal representation.
Well, to an extent, yes. At least two of their breaches cost us
more money pro-rata for every day we spent on the job. I will
post a full explanation of this further down this thread. I
understand your point about legal representation but we are both
really only just now earning our individual livings, - enough to
pay the bills. Neither of us have any assets (to speak of) to
draw on.
Admittedly a lawyer could easily cost you 5k or so (if the case settled
fairly quickly and didn't go to trial) and possibly as much as 15k if the
case went to trial.
|
|You could try mediation. It might help. Some courts run a mediation
scheme.
At one point, we were going to do this. But the relationship
broke down far too seriously before it happened so it was
ditched.
The court may ask both parties to consider mediation again.
With a good mediator it could save both sides a great deal of money.
|>
|> As I said, we don't think that a contract still existed after..
|> a/ the client sacked the supervising architect and decided to
|> supervise their own job (effectively making site decisions in our
|> absence using our money).
But wasn't the architect their man, rather than your man? Unless you can
show that in the absence of the architect they made some plainly bad
decisions which added to the cost or the likelihood of future problems, that
might not be a very strong argument.
I must admit that we are flabbergasted that a figure of over
£50,000 (including the cost of their Surveyor's report), to
finish the entire job, is being put forward. We would dispute
almost every individual costing of their surveyor's report. But
we are, of course, not in a position to do so.
Well, yes you can. If you think the surveyor is wrong, you can go through
his report point by point, explaining why he is wrong. You can also put
questions to their expert under Part 35 of the CPR, preferably a very long
list of those questions that you think would put him on the spot, and he
will be obliged to answer your questions and his fee for answering them must
be paid by the claimant.
But you need to put the questions to him as quickly as possible.
I wonder if they
are allowed to only have one surveyor's report in order to
support their case?
Yes.
But the court may say that a court-appointed joint expert must prepare a
report which will then be binding on both sides. The fees of such a joint
expert would have to be met by both sides, equally. If you can't afford to
pay your share of those fees, your opponent would have to pay them and could
seek an order requiring you to pay them.
However a joint expert might be much fairer than their expert.
In short, you can have two bites of the cherry. Put questions to their
expert to try to get him to concede that some of the losses were caused by
the claimant's fault, and then try a joint expert to see if he is more
helpful to you.
What they are saying is that some of the work was sub-standard,
some of the work was incomplete and, of course, some of the work
(neighbour dispute) could not be completed. We are being charged
for all of it.
And that's where it would be helpful to get their expert to concede that
perhaps some of the costings should be disallowed.
They are also saying that they think that we charged VAT when we
were not registered. Of course, that stance is ridiculous as they
had our VAT number within 6 weeks of work starting and it's all
been both charged and paid, - and therefore easy to defend.
Also, they are charging us £1,500 per month for their 'losses' in
terms of inconvenience and loss of use of their property from the
(estimated) original date of completion. This has been assessed
as the cost of rent for a house of this nature in the area it
occupies. I should point out that they have lived in the house
throughout the entire build and we even put a temporary roof over
the 'knock-through' area in odred that they could do so. They
only ever had one room at a time inoperable and this was only
whilst major work was being completed.
1500 per month is fairly usual for loss of enjoyment of a house. Possibly
it's on the low side. Presumably they are saying that if you hadn't been in
breach of contract the house would have been completed and habitable much
sooner. Your task therefore is to show that it wouldn't, because of the
neighbour dispute or whatever. And you need to point this out in the
Defence that you draft.
The Defence must of course deal with each point in the Particulars of Claim
(by admitting, not admitting or denying, and by giving your version of the
facts) and must be served on your opponent and also lodged at court.
Finally, they are claiming 6% PA interest on the entire amount
claimed above. Stating section 69 of the County Courts Act 1984.
And that's bog standard and allowable.
.
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