Tribunal evidence deadline, absolutely no evidence from LEA

[theDudesmummy]

The deadline for filing of our evidence for our Tribunal was 5pm today, lots of hard work has gone into getting all of our evidence, video, expert reports, data, research etc together. LEA has filed nothing. Anyone else had experience of this and what happens next?

I think I remember 1 or 2 people who had the same thing, on the ABA-UK yahoo group.

One let them put in late stuff, played nice, lost; think the other hardballed it via their advocate - "the law is the law, you missed the deadline, tribunal must judge you on zero evidence, not give you timing leeway". Think the second one won.

But I am v old and have rubbish memory, so post it there!

Yup, just had this two weeks ago. This was followed by them conceding on parts of the appeal the next day, so it's probably a good sign for you!

I think it can go either way tbh.

What happened with us is the tribunal judge ruled that because we had loads of written evidence and the LA had none, that they get to talk for the whole of the hearing and we do not.

So be prepared for that BUT, know that it isn't usual. I had a rare (though sadly not isolated) incompetent judge coupled with a LA EP who hated both parents and ABA which I was asking for.

So what I would say is prepare yourself, but also argue that the LA missing the deadline should get them debarred from further proceedings and either plan your answer to the ruling from the judge that I had (we didn't have an argument as were taken by surprised) or mention to your legal team that you know of a case where the above happened and to ensure they are prepared.

My legal team is FS and I think she is aware of all the ins and outs. Not sure how there will be an EP from the LA as there has been no LA EP assessment for 18 months. But we wait to see what happens!

I presume they cannot prevent me from doing some talking at the hearing!?

Could it be that they don't have anything else to file? They might take the view that all their evidence is in the annexes to the statement and what you've filed already.

all my LA filed was the statement that was it - they also got no extra evidence - they faxed it through to the tribunal people way after 5pm and then I got it via post a couple of days later - they did email me at 4.45pm to tell me they were faxing it to the tribunal and tehn I got about 50 emails from the solicitor with garbled pieces of paper - an absolute mess to say they had a solicitor. the fact you have heard nothing makes me wonder if they are going to concede but why not just tell you that rather than playing silly games although with LA you really cannot guess at times what their minds are thinking

You are right about not being able to figure what they are thinking! They put "intensive VB" programme in the Statement, then when we appealed the vagueness of this they just took it out and said that there was no evidence that ABA is effective. Go figure!