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Response to HELP ive been unfairly treated by the district judge -shortfall

from Guy Skipwith (guy@skipwith107.freeserve.co.uk)
All of the CPR must be read in the light of CPR 1, the Overriding Objective. One of the objectives relates to saving time and money.

The idea of summary judgment is to allow a case to be disposed of quickly where a defendant has no reasonable prospect of successfully defending it. This avoids the time, expense and legal costs of a full trial where a defence is bound to fail. Also, under CPR 3, which deals with the court's case management powers, the court has almost unlimited powers to extend deadlines and time limits.

The same kind of procedure applies to defendants. They can apply for a claimant's claim to be dismissed (struck out) summarily if there is no reasonable prospect of it succeeding. These decisions can be made 'ex parte' (without a hearing), although where this happens, there is an automatic right to apply to have the decision set aside.

If there is an arguable defence that has a reasonable prospect of success, summary judgment should not be given. If there is not, summary judgment will be given.

Also, just for the record, mortgage shortfall debts are not specalties. The are treated as mortgage debts, hence the 12 and 6 year limitation periods under s20(1) and s20(5) of the Limitation Act (see Bartlett v Bristol and West). If a shortfall debt was treated as a specialty, it would be 12 years for both principal and interest (s8).

All the best

Guy

(posted 7372 days ago)

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