Small claims court for the trouble with my ex-builder.
He is claiming we owe him money for a reason unexplained. We are defending in full and also counterclaiming the max under small claims.
We have a professional report from the structural engineer to evidence our defence and to support our counter claim which we need to submit with the allocations form we have just received, and also some emails from the Building inspector which will submit but not as professional evidence, but contact evidence.
So, my questions are:
- Do we/should we call the structural engineer as a formal witness to attend court. Would the formal report that he has provided be sufficient.
- Should we request that a formal report is obtained from the building control dept/building control surveyor, which I suspect will cost us a bit of money as we will be required to do this via a lawyer. The manager/boss of the building control team has said we need to 'supena' the info requested formally and then a formal report can be drawn (although I wondered if a normal SAR under data protection should give me the info I require).
- Should we ask the building inspector to attend as a formal witness. The actual inspector/surveyor has already indicated that he would have absolutely no problems standing up in front of the judge and saying the faults that occured lie completely and utterly with the builder and the costs we are claiming we necessary to remedy shocking work. But he also said he did not know how it works with his employers in terms of his being called legally - ie would cost us fees?
Also, we are asked if we have any other witnesses we wish to call. Can we/should we/is it wise to call for example friends who have seen the stress, shambles and hassle we have had to experience or is it not worth it/not be credible?