punter beats the county council

by drtim

20 Nov 2008

today i took on west sussex county council in the small claims court for a buckled road wheel caused by a pothole. they used the standard defence of the highways act 1980. the judge was brilliant. His opening gambit was "why are we here?" and suggested that the council should have gone to mediation since i had an arguable case. he told them that it was ludicrous to have a blanket policy of defending all claims. then we looked at the detail of the defence. The council brought 3 senior managers and a legal rep. In their own submission, the council said that they should inspect class c roads annually, but my road had historically been inspected annually. when pressed for a reason, there was an embarassed silence, and some squirming, and I knew that i had won. All costs were awarded in full.

moral of the story - take them on, check the small print - they will all be administrators of low ability, little motivation, and they are operating policies that they ASSUME to be correct.