Notice of Discontinuance - Court Hearing for Alleged Debt.

Bookworm wrote:Hello everyone.  

I have (or had) an active thread on the old 'Get Out of Debt' site. I logged on the other day in order to update my thread (things have been quiet for a few months as we awaited a court date etc.) and to my surprise...  

Well anyway, the trail was still warm and lead me here - and so here I am, with a further query..!

A brief re-cap:

07/02/17 - CCJ form received pertaining to an alleged debt (circa £5k) - Hoist Portfolio Holdings/Howard Cohen

08/02/17 - CPR18 letter sent to Hoist, and CCA Request to Cohen.

01/03/17 - Defence submitted to County Court Business Centre (on time)

06/04/17- Notice of Proposed Allocation to Small Claims Track

We (I say we - the alleged debt is my Partner's; but I'm doing the leg-work on her behalf) agreed to the option of 'Mediation'; but in the absence of any response from the Claimant there wasn't anything to mediate, so the case was allocated to our local County Court.

In June 2017 we received 'Notice of Allocation to the Small Claims Track' - a date for a hearing at our local County Court set for November 2017.

The notice also contained this paragraph:

"Unless the claimant does by [date and time] pay to the court the trial fee of £xxx.xx or file a properly completed application (i.e one which provides all the information in the manner requested) for help with fees, then the claim will be struck out with effect from xx October 2017 without further order and, unless the court orders otherwise, you will also be liable for the costs which the defendant has incurred."

Bringing things right up to date; earlier this week, my Partner received a letter from Howard Cohen, stating:

"Following the issue of the Claim against you, our client has instructed us to discontinue the Claim with the Court.
Please therefore find enclosed by way of service upon you a Notice of Discontinuance. We will also be notifying the Court that the Claim has been discontinued accordingly. Please be advised that our client has now permanently closed your account and no further action is required on your part."

In light of this latest development; I guess I'd like to know whether there's any further action that you would advise my partner to take to ensure that this matter can not be re-awoken at any future juncture.

In time, of course, the alleged debt will be Statute Barred; however, until that time it would be nice to know that it can not be resurrected and we can finally put this matter to bed.

As usual, thanks in advance for any advice, and to those whose advice has got us this far in the first place!

Bookworm wrote:Notification from the County Court in the post today:

Upon the claimant having failed to comply with paragraph 1 of the order...
(see my post above)

It is ordered that the claim shall be struck out.

assassin wrote:If you have spent time it has a value, you are paid hourly or weekly by an employer, you have the costs of postage and the time and fuel as well as any parking to go and post the letters.

They charge a rate for their time, they charge a rate for every letter posted, they charge for attending your property, so you are entitled to do the same, it also shows you mean business.

Tiggy wrote:
Interesting, does the date of that order pre date the date of their discontinuance lodged with the Court?  If so, that's it, claim struck out, they can't restart proceedings.

assassin wrote:It depends on the court Tiggy, often they give you the option of costs being awarded at the time of striking out, but as always it depends upon us not knowing the full circumstances.