One of the things I really hate is private wheel clamping. Well boys, your days are numbered!
Next month (November 2010) sees the Freedom Bill begin its passage through Parliament. If its passage through the Commons and the Lords is successful, it will be unlawful to implement any clamping operation on privately owned land. So it will be good riddance to the hired thugs who charge £150 for the release of a wheel clamp installed (usually as you approach your vehicle) just moments earlier - and who then extort another £150 from you for the 5 minutes it takes for you to return from a cashpoint machine!
I recently helped a client who was clamped, whilst sitting in his car, with the engine still running, next to his 18 month old baby strapped into her baby seat! Dad and daughter were waiting for wife and mum to exit the adjacent chemists with every parents' favourite recreational drug: Calpol. My client came to me £470 poorer than when he turned his left indicator towards the gaping and alluring space by the (apparently private) kerb.
But what can we do now when faced with intimidating demands for obscene amounts of money from the fat boys in luminous jackets?
Well the starting point is to require sight of the clamper's written authority to clamp. To become a licenced private wheel clamper, you need more than a warped desire to cause people distress and misery - you need, amongst other things, to abide by Clause 6 of the British Parking Association Approved Operator Scheme Code of Practice. This regulatory little beauty requires you to have written authority from the private landowner where you are operating. When you are near shops or similar (ie where parking would appear to be an uncontroversial thing to try!) you might well find that, whilst the clamper has a written authority from "somebody," it is really just a "nobody" - in the legal and "property owning" sense.
If handing over cash is the better immediate alternative to arguing about the rights and wrongs of the Clause 6 authority, then don't despair. You or your solicitor can write to the clamping company after the event to ask for the written authority from the landowner. I suggest you do this under threat of an application for something called Pre-Action Disclosure (for the legal anoraks amongst us, see Part 31.14 of the Civil Procedure Rules...taken best with a very large brandy!)
If the clamping company refuses to co-operate with your reasonable written request, the Court will often Order that the disclosure of the key document be accompanied by a cheque to reimburse legal costs! That always feels good.
For a better feeling still (if through this process you discover that there is no valid authority for the particular piece of land you were parked upon) advertise locally for other victims of the same scam and bring a group action to recover all of the money improperly extorted during the clampers fleeting but highly profitable visit to your town.
If the Freedom Bill becomes law, then old fashioned "no parking" signals will come back into vogue - like the building of walls and the erection of gates. If however, before that day comes, you would like help in tackling some luminous jackets, then please contact me via our website: http://www.cwd-law.com/.
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Fish Fatalities & Fitness For Purpose
I was in the pub on Saturday and my mate was moaning. His wife had bought a hair dryer which he thought was too hot. His wife was happy with her purchase but my (balding) mate had suffered what he described as a serious “melting injury” in his rush to get ready for the pub. My mate has always been prone to theatrics. When we played football as kids he had a season ticket in the St John’s Ambulance. He was a total embarrassment to his poor dad, who was regarded locally as the hardest footballer ever to walk the earth. My mate had an awful lot to live up to – and, in all honesty, he didn’t!
His severe melting injury manifested itself as very mild “redness” to the crown of his bald head. He said he was going to take the hair dryer back because it was not “fit for purpose”. I could tell he’d been reading the Citizens Advice Bureau website again so I tried to get his (red) head straight.
As a local lawyer, I’m often asked to explain legal concepts in the pub. In my experience, people hate paying lawyers, so if you can get your knowledge, for free, on a Saturday night and avoid asking any questions between 9 and 5, Monday to Friday, you’ve had great result.
I explained the position to my mate like this. Under consumer law, you have a statutory right to reject any goods, bought in a shop, which are not fit for the purpose for which they were sold. If you buy something in a shop which is not “fit for purpose”, you are entitled to a full refund, providing the problem is brought to the shop keeper’s attention within a reasonable time – and you have not done anything which would reasonably be construed as showing your acceptance of the goods: using the hairdryer every day, for example, or perhaps smashing it up!
I explained, as nicely as I could, that a hairdryer which pumps out hot air to dry hair would seem (in my eyes at least) to be pretty “spot on” in terms of functionality. I had my work cut out though. He’s a hard guy to please. This was the mate who criticized Nelson Mandela for falling short on his economic policy after bringing the apartheid regime to an end. “It’s not as if he’s had no time on his hands” was how he assessed Nelson’s shortcomings. I persevered by telling him about my daughter’s fish....a very sorry tale indeed.
In the summer, when I disappeared to watch England’s embarrassing attempt to win the FIFA World Cup, I left my daughter in charge of the fish. She promised to feed Tommy (a goldfish) and Midge (type unknown...but it was really little!) every single day. I gave my wife a supervisory role in case my daughter “fell short”, Nelson Mandela style. Well to cut this part of the story short, mum and daughter both let themselves down and when I returned from my trip, Tommy had eaten Midge in preference to starving to death himself.
“But what’s this got to do with fitness for purpose?” my pal asked . We were close to last orders and his fear of running over into the “charging zone” was palpable.
I explained that in a fit of guilt, my wife had sent me and our girl down to the pet shop to buy some presents for Tommy; basically some new gravel (lucky boy!) and anything else which took our fancy. What took my daughter’s fancy was a little fishy pergola and a little clay model of an open jawed Moby Dick. She was delighted with her purchases, but forgot all about the fish again once we were home and everything was in the tank.
I was a bit nervous about Tommy’s immediate reaction to Moby, but he seemed to calm down a bit the following day and all was well again in fish world.
To my horror though, when I went to feed Tommy before work on Monday morning, he was nowhere to be seen. The tank was fish- free! After I’d checked my wife’s movements (she hadn’t fished out the fish) I had a ridiculous conversation with our decorator who was the only other person present and capable of fishnapping. If I’m honest, he seemed a bit affronted, and certainly very surprised, by my line of questioning. In hindsight, he definitely had the moral high ground: what self respecting decorator would steal a very old fish?
It was only in the evening, when I was following up on my wife’s theory that dead fish don’t always float, but sometimes bury themselves in gravel (I know....ridculous!) that I made a gruesome finding. As I accidentally nudged Moby Dick onto its side, I saw Tommy’s orange body lodged fairly, squarely and very uncomfortably into the base of the model. Moby Dick, the new fish toy, had eaten Tommy the fish. Now that, I pronounced, is what can properly be described, in a legal sense, as “not fit for purpose”....a fish eating fish toy!
My rather uncharitable mate finished his pint with the following words: “ Well I have to say I think Tommy got exactly what he deserved ” . He had a point.
Next week’s blog takes me to Amersham fair (for replacement fish) and to the thorny legal issue of private wheel clamping...watch this space!
His severe melting injury manifested itself as very mild “redness” to the crown of his bald head. He said he was going to take the hair dryer back because it was not “fit for purpose”. I could tell he’d been reading the Citizens Advice Bureau website again so I tried to get his (red) head straight.
As a local lawyer, I’m often asked to explain legal concepts in the pub. In my experience, people hate paying lawyers, so if you can get your knowledge, for free, on a Saturday night and avoid asking any questions between 9 and 5, Monday to Friday, you’ve had great result.
I explained the position to my mate like this. Under consumer law, you have a statutory right to reject any goods, bought in a shop, which are not fit for the purpose for which they were sold. If you buy something in a shop which is not “fit for purpose”, you are entitled to a full refund, providing the problem is brought to the shop keeper’s attention within a reasonable time – and you have not done anything which would reasonably be construed as showing your acceptance of the goods: using the hairdryer every day, for example, or perhaps smashing it up!
I explained, as nicely as I could, that a hairdryer which pumps out hot air to dry hair would seem (in my eyes at least) to be pretty “spot on” in terms of functionality. I had my work cut out though. He’s a hard guy to please. This was the mate who criticized Nelson Mandela for falling short on his economic policy after bringing the apartheid regime to an end. “It’s not as if he’s had no time on his hands” was how he assessed Nelson’s shortcomings. I persevered by telling him about my daughter’s fish....a very sorry tale indeed.
In the summer, when I disappeared to watch England’s embarrassing attempt to win the FIFA World Cup, I left my daughter in charge of the fish. She promised to feed Tommy (a goldfish) and Midge (type unknown...but it was really little!) every single day. I gave my wife a supervisory role in case my daughter “fell short”, Nelson Mandela style. Well to cut this part of the story short, mum and daughter both let themselves down and when I returned from my trip, Tommy had eaten Midge in preference to starving to death himself.
“But what’s this got to do with fitness for purpose?” my pal asked . We were close to last orders and his fear of running over into the “charging zone” was palpable.
I explained that in a fit of guilt, my wife had sent me and our girl down to the pet shop to buy some presents for Tommy; basically some new gravel (lucky boy!) and anything else which took our fancy. What took my daughter’s fancy was a little fishy pergola and a little clay model of an open jawed Moby Dick. She was delighted with her purchases, but forgot all about the fish again once we were home and everything was in the tank.
I was a bit nervous about Tommy’s immediate reaction to Moby, but he seemed to calm down a bit the following day and all was well again in fish world.
To my horror though, when I went to feed Tommy before work on Monday morning, he was nowhere to be seen. The tank was fish- free! After I’d checked my wife’s movements (she hadn’t fished out the fish) I had a ridiculous conversation with our decorator who was the only other person present and capable of fishnapping. If I’m honest, he seemed a bit affronted, and certainly very surprised, by my line of questioning. In hindsight, he definitely had the moral high ground: what self respecting decorator would steal a very old fish?
It was only in the evening, when I was following up on my wife’s theory that dead fish don’t always float, but sometimes bury themselves in gravel (I know....ridculous!) that I made a gruesome finding. As I accidentally nudged Moby Dick onto its side, I saw Tommy’s orange body lodged fairly, squarely and very uncomfortably into the base of the model. Moby Dick, the new fish toy, had eaten Tommy the fish. Now that, I pronounced, is what can properly be described, in a legal sense, as “not fit for purpose”....a fish eating fish toy!
My rather uncharitable mate finished his pint with the following words: “ Well I have to say I think Tommy got exactly what he deserved ” . He had a point.
Next week’s blog takes me to Amersham fair (for replacement fish) and to the thorny legal issue of private wheel clamping...watch this space!
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