The Claim
How do I start my claim?
To get the ball rolling, in a nutshell, what you need to do is first of all decide which court your claim goes into. If we're talking about smaller, less significant claims, we're talking about county court basically. If you're litigant in person and you're looking at a debt recovery claim, we're talking about claims below five thousand pounds, those fit nicely into the county court. Now, to start your claim off, what you need to do is you need to get hold of a claim form. There are two avenues you can take. One, is you can start your claim via the internet, by going onto moneyclaim.gov.uk. You can do it all from the comfort of your own home. You don't have to see any court officials and all of the guidance is there for you. The more conventional route is to pop off to your local county court and ask them for a claim form, which they will give you one, along with some really good guidance notes. The only thing to note about where you'll end up in terms of courts, since we're talking about county court claims, is generally it would be in your local county court. But just to make sure if it's a debt recovery claim and against a defendant and that defendant defends the case, i.e. he says I don't owe you this money and he lives somewhere else, then your claim will be transferred to the that court where he lives. You'll need to take that on board from the beginning because travel expenses, again, could far out weigh the amount you expect to claim back.
How do no Win No Fee companies make a profit?
Let's talk about the No Win No Fees basis. It's all over the papers. I think it's probably quite a good thing. In a nutshell what it means is that people can sue without having that awful stress of "Oh my goodness, if I go through this process and I don't win, it's all over the papers and I've got all of this expense. And I can't afford legal services and I can't afford to pay the bills. But I don't really know what I'm doing." Some law firms belong to a scheme where by they will say to you, "Look you've got a good claim. We've had a look at the papers. We think that you might win. So why don't we take the risk from you, we will give you advice at the outset. We'll represent you in court. And if you win, then the defendant will be told, will be ordered to pay all fees, so no loss there. Takes the risk off you. But if you win we'll take a cut of your winnings." And that is it in a nutshell. But if you're going to take the benefit of this great scheme, then you need to make sure that you speak to your solicitor about some form of insurance. You might ask, "Oh my goodness, why the realms of insurance here? What do I need insurance for?" You need insurance in case you don't win that case. Because who is going to pay the other sides legal fees? Well, the answer is you, if you don't win. And so it's all very well having a great case if you win the amount you receive covers all the cost and you don't get as much as you would have done normally. But nobody has lost. But if you lose, the last thing you want is to be ordered to pay the defendants costs. And that your solicitor will be able to help you get insurance to cover that eventuality.
Which court should I use?
OK. There are many courts that are available to you. The court you choose will very much depend on the nature of your case; you won't be surprised to hear. Now when we're talking about litigating person, i.e., when you're in the driving seat, we're really talking about the small claims court of the county court. And the county court deals with all of those less significant, less weighty cases, those cases with a low value. But nevertheless, the county court deals with a whole wrath of different subject matters. You've got debt recovery cases, road traffic accidents, employment cases, defective goods, and defective service. A whole load of day to day cases, I would say, in the county court. Now the county court itself has three different processes. The small claims track, the small claims court, is one of them, and that's the one that we'll talk about quite a lot because it's set up to be ideal for an individual to take his own action without legal advice, without the expense of legal advice. The other claims, the multi-track proceedings and the fast track, are for more complicated cases. And really, it's up to the judge to decide where your case fits in. You'll hear on the news stories about high court and the royal courts of justice. And unless you're very unlucky, hopefully you're not going to end up there. And certainly if you're a litigating person, you're not going to end up there with a bit of luck, because those are the cases that are very complex, very high value, very high profile, and the cases where really, you need to have a solicitor involved. The one thing that we need to say is if you are taking action in the county court, then you'd think that of course that's your local court where you start the claim off, and you'd be absolutely right. The only crinkle to that, if you like, is if you're taking debt recovery proceedings, and the person that you're claiming against, the opponent, defends that case. So he says, "I don't owe you that money." You do risk the claim being transferred to that defendant's court. This is fine if he lives next door, but not so great if he lives 100 miles away. Think of the travel expenses.
What is the claim form?
Now, to start off your proceedings, you will need to go to court and get a claim form. Now, the claim form is the document that is sent to your opponent. On that claim form will be lots of information about the claim. You will need to specify precisely what it is you're claiming, what your grievance is, the subject matter of the claim, the nature of the claim, and what you aim to get out of the claim, i.e. what you aim to recover by taking the claim, which basically will be money or compensation. Now, interestingly, you will also need to specify any interest on the claim form. That interest will run at 8 percent from the date that you first became aware if its a personal injury case or the date your action first arose to the date of the claim. So, you'll need to specify that. So there are lots of different things you need to put down on this claim form. If you haven't got room, you can use another piece of paper and that's called a particulars of claim. Basically it just sets out the facts of the claim. Once you've finished with it, once you've signed at the bottom, your statement of claim, you need to take it to the court. The court stamps it and then the court sends it out to the defendant, at which point you become the claimant and your opponent becomes the defendant.
What information will the claim form require?
Now the claim form has a number of different rules associated with it, and thank goodness there are fantastic guidance notes from your court or on the internet. Don't forget your court has offices there that can help you not for legal advice of course, but to help you fill in the claim form. What you need to do is, you need to specify the exact nature of your claim and you need to make that as clear as possible. You also need to put on that form exactly what it is you're claiming. Money and interest in most cases but also an element of compensation. Importantly you need to look at the value, you need to specify the very value of your case. That's easy and it's certain in a specified debt claim that's easy, "Joe Bloggs owes me ten pounds." So you put in the box at the bottom of the page ten pounds and put it right inside. Now if it's an unspecified amount that's a little bit more tricky because you need to specify you need to say you don't, what you expect to recover, a certain amount of money within different brackets. I think one is low, less than five thousand pounds. Another bracket is over five thousand pounds to fifteen thousand pounds. The other one is over fifteen thousand pounds. And the reason for that is it helps the court determine where to put your case and deals with it. If you don't know how much to expect to recover then you simply say that on the claim form.
How do you conduct a personal injury claim?
When having claims of personal injury and I would say you do really need to be looking at getting somebody to advise you on that just because the elements of compensation are so tricky, the rules associated with the Court on personal injury cases are so tricky. It's best to get somebody to advise you. They can also advise you on the form of words. There is a specific form of words you need to use. Basically it says something along the lines of "my claim includes a claim for personal injury." In relation to personal injury cases there is a specific form of words that you need to use and basically not taking the words in their entirety you need to say "my claim involves an element of personal injury and the amount I want to claim for the loss of amenity, pain, and suffering either doesn't exceed 1000 pounds or does exceed 1000 pounds.
What legal jargon is required for a claim form?
There are many special, legal words you need to use. I'm joking, of course. Actually, the claim forms are pretty simple to fill-in. Nevertheless, there are two areas where you will need to use a specific form of words. And the first one is in a statement of claim, and that's that document, the claim form, where you put all of the information down about your case, and it won't surprise you to hear that you need to put a statement to the end that says, "I believe that the particulars of this claim are true." And then you need to sign it. So, that's one. The second area where you need to use a specific form of words, and I'm not going to give you them here, is in relation to interest. You need to claim a specific amount of interest at a specific rate. The words go something along the lines of "I intend to claim interest pursuant to section 69 of the courts at 1985, at a rate of 8% from the date of your action beginning, so that the date of the breach of contract, for example, up to and including the date of the claim, and also a daily rate, from the date of the claim up to the date of judgment or earlier payment of “x%”. So, you actually need to put in a specific figure for your interest. But you can get advice on that, and certainly the guidance notes help you with that specific form of wording.
What do you do with a completed claim form?
Okay, so you have filled in the claim form with all the necessary facts, you've signed the statement of claim, you've made sure that you have put in a specific figure for interest. So, you're ready to go. What do you do with your claim form? Well, there are two ways that you can deal with your claim. You can do it online through moneyclaim.gov.uk, or the more conventional route is to pop down to your local county court and see one of the officers there who will look through the papers and they will stamp them. The thing you need to remember is that you don't just take one pack, you have to photocopy your claim form and the guidance notes. You need a copy for the court and you need a copy for both the defendants. The court will then go ahead and it'll serve, that means it'll deliver, the documents by first class post, and the defendant, if you want to do it yourself, that's fine you just need to ask them after they've stamped it, and you can do it yourself, I wouldn't suggest you do, but leave it to the court. And then you sit back and you wait.
What fees are involved in litigation and can they be avoided?
Litigation proceedings are expensive. When you lodge a claim form you're going to need to pay a fee. The amount of that fee will depend very much on the value of your case. You can ask the court, they've got this sliding scale, the higher the value of your case the higher the fee will be and they'll be able to tell you how much. Now litigation is expensive but for those people who have low incomes there are ways of getting around or getting assistance with that expense. Now in certain circumstances if you can show undue hardship you can get out of paying that fee. And that involves talking to the courts and adhering to their different rules. You've also got civil legal aid of course and that's not on the expenses front, that's on a representation front and a legal help front. But civil legal aid will be available to you if you have a low income, if your income is less than two and a half grand a month or if you have savings of less than eight thousand pounds. There are also certain rules and things and they're all there with the court offices to tell you about, you know if you're on income support. So there are ways of getting around the expense you just need to make sure that you fit into the different pockets to do so.
What does it mean if my claim is 'time barred'?
Now one of the golden rules is if you are going to sue, do it quick, not withstanding the fact you've got all of these other alternative methods of sorting your claim out. The reason for that is that sometimes you'll become what's known as time barred from bringing your action. Basically what it means is if you've got a claim, if there is a breach of contract or something, or if somebody owes you a debt and they haven't paid and it's a month overdue, then get on with it because there are rules in place which say that in certain categories of cases if you delay, then you will not be able to bring your claim. You will be time barred. Now for contract cases that's six years, for professional negligence it's six years, for personal injury it's three years from the date that you became aware of the injury, or if you're eighteen, it's three years from the date from which you became eighteen. So the key is, don't delay. If there has been a delay, then for goodness sake get somebody to advise you as to whether actually you can bring a valued claim.
