Victory against Car Parking Overstay charge

[LauraBridges]

A wonderful judge....

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Thats great.

That is an awesome ruling, love the bit at the end in regards to costs and the protests of council!

Yes, a good judge. He is right that they cannot keep secret a vital contract because they are worried it will be put on line. If they want to rely on it they needed to have given it to the lady and the court in advance and they cannot just select pages that suit them from a court judgment rather than giving the judge the whole judgment.

Some of these charges for overstaying at free car parks are very very high.

The judge is giving the claimant's lawyer a hard time. He clearly sees this case as highly interesting for reasons of his own. But the defendant isn't putting up much of an argument. I can see that the claimant wouldn't want to put forward examples of cases where it lost. Why would any lawyer do that? Surely that's the job of the defence. But in this case there is no defence lawyer.

No, against a litigant in person the advocate should be putting all relevant case law before the judge. Your first duty is to assist the court. You can still argue your client's case but I consider what he did to be not acting ethically. And that goes some way to explain why the judge gave him such a hard time.

(Btw there was a longer thread in Chat yesterday about this, started by me. :) )

Fantastic!
I read the whole thing- go judge!
Love his interpretation of the maternity leave childcare expenses.

Like the bit about English normally using punctuation. And how technically it can't be a penalty because with proper use the car parking is free. Brilliant.

Yes it's fun (had not seen your other thread, eurochick).

marvellous reading

I got fined by parking eye once. I'm really annoyed at myself for paying it now, as it was free parking anyway

Really interesting - especially the part about costs and childcare.

I suspect on that the judge was wrong under the precise rules, but right on moral grounds - he husband had to take a day off work to mind the baby so the family lost a day's pay so why shouldn't the other side pay that (whereas the rules probably say you can only recover your own loss of pay not babysitting costs).

Laura I suspect that is correct. Perhaps the rules need changing to reflect the reality of losses? I have often wondered about jury service, too - who pays the child care if you are called and have small children, or do you get excused?

Funny!

I thought that for a contract to be valid there had to be consideration i.e. some form of payment for some form of goods/services/action etc.

If the parking was free then there was no opportunity for consideration to have been made.

Is this now effectively the law - they cannot charge you a penalty for overstaying free parking?