Default County Court Judgement rejected by Defendant

[pgchimp]

I need to offer a bit of background information for this to make sense. I live in a Housing Association (HA) property and after having a new boiler fitter in December, needed a new timer to be fitted in February.

It transpires that the timer was wired back to from giving rise to a huge gas bill so I informed the HA that I would be seeking compensation for part of the excessive bill do to the incompetence of the appointed contractor.

Letters started going backward and forwards and on May 8th i had had enough and gave the HA notice of intent to pursue this in the small claims court, letters still went to and fro at no time did the HA offer an alternative defendant. My argument being that the contractor who did the work was approved by them, supplied by them, and allowed access into my home by them as I did not have a choice to select another Gas contractor for the job.

I went to MCOL and issued a claim on 07/06/2010
My claim was issued on 08/06/2010
I submitted a judgement against the HA on 29/0//2010 being the required 14 days for a default to be issued

Meanwhile I received a letter from MCOL dated 25th JUNE 2010 stating the following

Re Case Number XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Reference unserved claim form
PLEASE FIND ENCLOSED YOUR CLAIM PACK RETURNED AS UNSERVED FROM DEFENDANT

In this pack received from the MCOL was a letter from the defendant to the court stating that the claims form had been incorrectly issued and i should now amend the claim so that the defendant is the Actual contractor who did the work and not the HA who appointed them.

They have waited until now to bring this to my attention and I did not receive this until After I had submitted judgement on 29/06/2010. However the letter from the court also states
“IF YOU ARE CONFIDENT THAT THE CLAIM FORM HAS BEEN SERVED CORRECTLY, NO FURTHER ACTION IS REQUIRED.

So I am pursuing the HA and not the contractor However when I look at MCOL now it states
“YOUR JUDGEMENT AGAINST xxxxxxx WAS REJECTED ON 30/06/2010” with no further explaination

can you please tell what happens now as I still have the defendants rejected claims pack in my possession which was sent by MCOL and this rejection by the defendant.

thanks

surely you need to seek proper legal advice and although we do have members who know their way around law this is by and large a tech support forum

[Flyboy]

Couldn't you have just simply turned the boiler off?

[Rob]

MCOL = Money claims online - the internet based side for submitting and tracking small claims court stuff. Just had to it as I didn't have a clue of that acronym.

In most cases organisations such as Housing Associations will simply act as an agent to place orders for works to be caried out. they won't be directly responsible for the standard of the works. It is the conrtractor, therefore any claim for the financial losses you have incured due to their faulty works should probably have been made against the contractor.

The HA may have a separate case to answer, but only if you can prove that they have been negligent in some way by appointing the contractor or that they have failed to adequately supervise and check their works. That is a completely separate issue to the costs you incurred because the wiring was incorrect. However the HA as they placed the order with the contractor should, in my view have been assisting you to obtain compensation from the contractor caused by their faulty works, even though it is unlikely to be the HA who are liable for such costs.

I can therefore see why the HA has rejected your monetary claim, and the courts have upheld that. If in doubt you'll need to delve into your tenancy agreement with the HA to understand how they are responsible for placing orders for works to your home where the HA may still have a duty of care to you of ensuring equipment is properly maintained.

[Angua]

You could try claiming from the contractor. However they may in turn refer you back to the HA (does strike me as odd that the HA did not have an SLA (Service Level Agreement) with the contractor which should ensure rectification of any faults).

Would try CAB for advice or http://www.tenantservicesauthority.org/

[Xaccers]

The contractor should have professional indemnity insurance to cover this.

I take it that during the to and fro of letters you asked who the contractor was and the HA failed to tell you?

[pgchimp]

Many thanks for all your replys I have hung back from responding as ive been waiting on developments from the county court

It transpires that if a defualt judgement is served after the 14 days because the defendant did not file a defence, then returning the papers as unserved is not a defence and the judgement stands.

So this HA ignored me from day one, treated my letters as a joke, tried to pass the buck, which incidently was down to them as I pay rent to them and contracted to them through a tenancy agreement and then finally they thought they were being clever by ignoring the court and returning the papers as unserved

So I can serve judgement again, they have 14 days to pay in full otherwise I can send in the bailiffs, they will then be blacklisted, with a county court judgement on their credit file for 6 years

So there it is, the little man won, ok you might not think £250 is a lot of money but its better in my pocket than theres

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by pgchimp

Many thanks for all your replys I have hung back from responding as ive been waiting on developments from the county court

It transpires that if a defualt judgement is served after the 14 days because the defendant did not file a defence, then returning the papers as unserved is not a defence and the judgement stands.

So this HA ignored me from day one, treated my letters as a joke, tried to pass the buck, which incidently was down to them as I pay rent to them and contracted to them through a tenancy agreement and then finally they thought they were being clever by ignoring the court and returning the papers as unserved

So I can serve judgement again, they have 14 days to pay in full otherwise I can send in the bailiffs, they will then be blacklisted, with a county court judgement on their credit file for 6 years

So there it is, the little man won, ok you might not think £250 is a lot of money but its better in my pocket than theres

Well done

[joglynne]

As Sirius says, Well done. I hope you will keep us up to date with your progress.

[alferret]

Originally Posted by Flyboy

Couldn't you have just simply turned the boiler off?

What and have no hot water LMAO if it was wired wrong it would probably take 1 or 2 bills for discrepancies to show up, IF the boiler was switched off then the OP would have NO hot water and there would be no bill to show discrepancies.

Poor input from you Flyboyzzz

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by pgchimp

So there it is, the little man won, ok you might not think £250 is a lot of money but its better in my pocket than theres

£250 is a hell of a lot of money, keep us updated as to how they deal with the second serving and the bailiffs

[Flyboy]

Originally Posted by alferret

What and have no hot water LMAO if it was wired wrong it would probably take 1 or 2 bills for discrepancies to show up, IF the boiler was switched off then the OP would have NO hot water and there would be no bill to show discrepancies.

Poor input from you Flyboyzzz

But it was only the timer that wasn't working properly. Surely the OP would have known when the boiler was running or not? If it was running when it shouldn't have been, all you have to do is turn it off manually. Every boiler has that option.

As my post was not directed at you, I really don't understand why you have chosen to have responded in a condescending manner, but only you can reconcile that.

[Mr_love_monkey]

Originally Posted by Xaccers

The contractor should have professional indemnity insurance to cover this.

"should have" - but as far as I know there is no legal requirement for them to do so - this has always been one of the complaints about 'Corgi' (or 'SAFE' as they are known now) that there is no requirement for a Corgi approved contractor to have insurance.. which is just daft

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Flyboy

But it was only the timer that wasn't working properly. Surely the OP would have known when the boiler was running or not? If it was running when it shouldn't have been, all you have to do is turn it off manually. Every boiler has that option.

As my post was not directed at you, I really don't understand why you have chosen to have responded in a condescending manner, but only you can reconcile that.

Many people say boiler when they actually have an immersion heater, especially common in HA properties.
Without having the CH on (not likely in this climate) you're not likely to notice it running, and of course because it's running for so long, you'll have hot water when you expect to because during the short "on" times (when it's actually off) it won't cool down that much.
There was an issue with some Council house/HA immersion heaters where they just kept on heating, eventually the hot water overflowed into the header tank bringing that up to dangerous temperatures.
A girl lost her life when such an incident happened and the header tank ruptured flooding her bed with scalding hot water.
Her parents had no idea that the heater was on all that time.
The council/HA were aware, but didn't notify any tenants, and were replacing the faulty part on the sly under the guise of "annual maintenance"

[Flyboy]

The OP clearly says that it was gas. Therefore one can only surmise that it was connected to a gas boiler.

If it was a new boiler, I would suspect that it was condensing combination boiler. Many of the HAs that I have had dealings with now fit these as standard (that doesn't mean that I am saying that all of them do it). Therefore, it is improbable that it is a matter of the hot water being the element that is causing the excess use of the gas. If it is, I have yet to see a completely silent boiler. If it is using a storage cylinder, the boiler should only need to be on twice a day at the most. If it is on constantly, or at the wrong times, it should have been fairly easy to hear. This is not a dig at the OP's claim, but I was just asking the question as to why he allowed his gas bill to go so high, when most people would have just switched the thing off.