A judge has given a car park company and its barrister an absolute pummelling for pursuing a litigant-in-person who refused to pay an £85 fine.
ParkingEye took Natasha Collins-Daniel to Bristol County Court. And Deputy District Judge Melville-Shreeve showed no mercy to either the car park operator or its lawyer, a Mr Gopal. Melville-Shreeve beagn by chastising Gopal's decision only to cite those cases which ParkingEye had won, saying "if I hadn’t bothered to look at the portal I wouldn’t have known about all the cases where ParkingEye lost".
The judge, who may or may not have been clamped in the past, went on to castigate Gopal's attempts to pass off obiter remarks as persuasive authority: "absolutely no use", he said before rubbishing ParkingEye's refusal to disclose its contract with the car park owner. "You’re very coy about it, and reading the evidence there was a sort of suggestion that I might be allowed to peek at your agreement with the landowner, I don’t know, if I ask nicely or something?"
The judge moved on to mock Gopal's claims that a contract existed between ParkingEye and the defendant before working his way through the agreement line-by-line, commenting "now, first of all it has to be observed that in English we generally use punctuation".
In all, Collins-Daniel spoke just once, when the judge asked her if she was happy to move on to his judgment: "That’s fine thank you" she replied, probably having guessed what would come next. Melville-Shreeve found in her favour, refused Gopal leave to appeal and, when he discovered that Collins-Daniel was on maternity leave, ordered ParkingEye to pay her £45 in compensation plus £9.80 for parking.
Gopaled fought to the end, going so far as to say, "Sir, just for the note I have to point out I think that’s an unfair order". But Melville-Shreeve ignored the slight, moving on to congratulate the defendant on her new baby.
This was in November! They don't like to discuss things!
