Home legal cover

[newhouse12345]

Hi,

Has anyone used home legal protection to file a case for misrepresentation or professional negligence?

We have just logged a case with our insurers but I'm sceptical about the whole process. Will they support us? Will we get the best advice?

Has anyone had a similar case? How were the insurance company? How did you find the process?

We are completely out of our depths with the situation but we really need to get professional advice. I really hope our insurance company will help us.

Any tips would be very welcome

Thanks 😊

In terms of compensation we’re not expecting anything to be honest. If we win I think it’s likely he won’t pay us anything. He’ll claim he’s too poor (which is why I’ve saved his Instagram posts about treating himself to a whole new set of shiny new tools and the huge new job he’s started in someone’s house!). The trauma from all the this has been awful so I’m not above applying for a CCJ against him then.

He raised the claim first so we had to go to court regardless but the whole point of us going through the process is so there’s a line drawn under it and he can’t come back at us later. Small claims can be raised within 6 years of the fault occurring which is a long time of waiting for the court letter to come through the door!

@Tsc2011

Oh god! What a nightmare! Are you claiming for a return of your money, the increased cost and damaged property? Is there a limit on how much you can claim?
Ours just says over £10k.

Yes the council notified residents of the parking measures and he would have been informed that his property would be impacted. It gave information about how to apply for a dropped kerb etc.
He was the landlord but no one was living here, so he would have received all correspondence. If he read them or not, who knows.

Subsequent letters we'v received have been hand delivered by the council so I don't think he could claim there weren't delivered.

It's a legal expenses policy. Insurers will have panel firms (solicitors) who deal with cases. Some legal expenses insurers have their own law firms - DAS Law and Markel Law are two examples.

It'll be for the lawyers to assess prospects and I would guess that for as long as those solicitors say the prospects of succeeding are in excess of 50%, your insurers will fund them.

Check the wording of the policy.

Also, if the claim value is small, insurers will probably limit what they're willing to fund. There's no point spending £10k to recover £2k for you.

@newhouse12345 I think you have a good case against him and your solicitor then.

I know that for court documents they say a letter is served if it’s just put in the post. They don’t need to see that the person saw it. Someone can even make a claim against you and serve papers on a house you no longer live at and it’s considered valid- nuts!

We weren’t sure what to claim for as it’s a bit complicated but the Consumer Rights Act, 2015 says the costs of a repeat performance should be paid for by the trader so we’re claiming the full cost of completing the work and the cost of the damage to the house. It comes in under £10k which is the limit for small claims court.

They do need to be able to demonstrate that the address documents were served at was the last known address.

Do you think we have to pick one or the other? Or can we seek from both? Would it be all part of the same case? Or separate?

I guess we would need advice about the depreciation of our house value. The space will make our house unappealing to many now as it has a fully block paved front garden which now can't be used as it's got a parking bay across the entrance. It looks ridiculous and means we have no guaranteed parking.

Our house was £700k, I'm not sure what % the value will now have dropped by with the parking removed.

I think we'l also have to pay to landscape the front garden if it's not usable as a drive

@newhouse12345 I think if you lay it all out to your new solicitor they’ll be able to advise who best to go after. I, personally think they’re both liable.

What a nightmare! Get advice from your solicitor but you’ll probably have to get 2-3 valuations of your property where they consider the price with and without the parking to work out the depreciation. Get 3 quotes for landscaping as well and submit them as evidence to your solicitor.

If the owner didn’t live at the property, he might not have been aware of the proposals. Surely if he had, he would have protected his interests? Or maybe sold when he couldn’t use the “drive”? Difficult to prove either way. I think your searches should have turned this up though.

Yeah I'm interested to understand if we have a case against either.
I think logically they are both at fault, but I don't know if we can prove it.

He didn't live there, but he owned it and it was empty. He can't claim anyone else took his post as no one had lived there for 6 months plus before we bought the house.

Can he just claim he didn't know? Even if the council hand delivered it to a property he owns!? 🤷🏻‍♀️ I don't know how the law works

@newhouse12345 Well he will claim he didn’t know. Even if he did. It’s really about what each party was legally required to do and how you get compensation if they didn’t comply with the law. As this is worth quite a lot of money to you, I would consult a property solicitor to see who they think should be pursued and if it’s worth it. I’m assuming you haven’t. I feel very sorry for your situation. It truly is awful.

It's soo frustrating that we'v found ourselves in this situation!

I have started the process with our legal insurance. Hopefully they will give us good advice about what to do.

I really hope that someone has to pay for all this stress. I'm always sceptical though. Sometimes life just isn't fair 👎🏼

Hi,

Quick update. Our insurance company has said based on the information we provided they can't confirm if the success rate would be above 51% so they aren't accepting our claim at this point. They want more information, a copy of the survey, the full solicitor file etc. they have also asked if we'v made a complaint to the legal ombudsman.

Has anyone been through this process? How has the legal ombudsman process been? Iv submitted our application but it says it could be 10 weeks before we get an initial response.

I have read that the legal ombudsman is not the best place to go for a negligence claim. If you look online at some of the specialist firms that offer legal representation for professional negligence claims they tell you the legal ombudsman will be unlikely to award much for negligence and that is if they even understand the arguments. It appears to be a lightweight service best suited to small inconveniences in service where you would be happy with a token £200 or so for poor service. Read the website guidance carefully because you could be precluded from making a negligence claim later if you have pursued the matter with the legal ombudsman ( or it might be that you can pursue it but should consider whether to accept the outcome or not because if you accept a small offer of compensation that may stop you making a legal claim for negligence). The law firm should warn you about this but panel solicitors may try to send you off on a different route for your claim so that you cannot then make a claim for legal expenses later.

Legal insurance only take cases that are totally winnable without any work. You might have to pursue the claim privately. You wouldn’t need to involve the ombudsman but you would need to assemble the proof you were not told the truth.

If they've admitted fault then you have a strong case as you can argue that had it come to light that there was no legal off street parking then you either would have pulled the purchase or demanded reduction in price as a house without off street is worth less than with off street parking.
Therefore they've freely admitted they didn't check this and they should have so you can bring a case against them

This should have been picked up in searches as well

Stalking me?

what on earth are you talking about? 😂

i first posted on this days ago!

well now i’m intrigued! 😂

No you didn't. You posted these comment's today after making unnecessary comments about me on the other thread.

I get you are trying to troll me. Not sure why? I'm not interested.

Leave me alone or il report you