Small Claims Procedure in the County Court: A Practical Guide to Mediation and Litigation

Legal professionals rarely receive any formal training or guidance on how to run a small claims case in the county court, while litigants in person often have to conduct such cases without legal representation. A lack of understanding of the rules frequently leads to confusion and mistakes, which in turn adds to expense and causes delay. The fifth edition of this popular title (formerly entitled Small Claims Procedure: A Practical Guide) will prove invaluable for busy practitioners and litigants in person alike, equipping them with the latest know-how on avoiding errors and making the most of the procedures that are available. The mediation section of the book has special prominence in this edition. Litigants using the small claims track can now agree to have their cases diverted to a mediation service run by the Courts service and at no additional charge. The system has been in operation now for over a year and has proved popular with court users, especially litigants in person. This book sets out the scheme in detail together with practical tips on how to make the best use of this new service. Updating material in this edition has been significant; of particular importance are the clarified rules on the date upon which court proceedings are served and the material which must be included in letters before action and other pre-action steps. Finally, the book has been made even more user friendly by improved cross-referencing, handy tables and an extensive glossary.

Tricia Pearl is to be congratulated on this her 5th edition... should be used by in house legal teams, and should be made available at all libraries and CAB offices and should be compulsary reading for all County Court staff, trainee Solicitors and pupil barristers... Even in these times of cuts, money should be found for there to be one copy in each County Court to be lent out when procedural queries are raised...It should be included by all Judges in their library allocation. It is that good. --Law Bulletin

This is not only a book that is going to be useful to you if you are suing your bank through The Consumer Action Group. This is going to be invaluable to you in any aspect at all where you attempt to Reclaim the Right. This book is much larger that I would normally have expected to be recommending for the lay person seeking to bring their own action in the County Court without professional legal help. At 300 pages I would normally have expected something far more technical and less successful than Patricia Pearl's book. However this book is beautifully laid out informative, explanatory, full of detailed tables, check lists, cross references, sample forms and many many reminders as to the basic principles of each particular stage that Patricia Pearl happens to be dealing with at that particular point. As can be expected the book deals with all aspects of bringing a case to court from the preliminary steps of attempting to negotiate, attempting to achieve an out of court settlement before the action starts, letters before action, drafting the claim and there are helpful forms included in the book where the steps to be taken are outlined on the forms themselves. Patricia Pearl goes through the business of filling out a claim form from dealing with the identity of the claimant and the defendant all the way through to dealing with the value of the claim with the amount claimed, calculating the court fee and of course this knotty problem that we all have of what interest to apply to the claim. She then talks about the defence and of course the allocation questionnaire. The book goes on to talk about costs in the Small Claims Court and a very good chapter on the hearing itself, lots of information about what is expected of you and how to conduct it. Finally Patricia Pearl deals with the whole question of applications to set aside judgement which is something we are finding more and more on the Forum as the banks are receiving judgements against them. She then goes on to discuss the process of enforcing the judgement.. In the last chapter or so of the book Patricia Pearl deals with drafting of various documents including drafting letters before action and includes samples, she deals with other correspondence gives examples of advice on drafting claims, defences, counter claims, admissions -- and once again deals with the calculations of statutory interest. Eventually a number of appendices deal with various issues including court fees, costs and appendix 5 contains a very useful selection of sample forms. It is difficult to see how any particular aspect of small claims process has been not dealt with in this book. Any litigant in person who uses this book as his guide will find that he has very few questions to ask at the end. At £17.10 this is not a cheap book but on the other hand no law books are cheap. This book has the advantage of qualifying for free delivery under the Amazon rules. I have been looking at quite a number of much smaller guides that I first imagined would be more far more suitable for the users of The Consumer Action Group forum but in fact when I compare them to this book by Patricia Pearl I find that they are really very scant in the amount of information that they give and they are still as much as half of the price of Patricia Pearl's book but probably less than a quarter of the value. This book demystifies the Small Claims process and is wholeheartedly recommended for anyone who wants to feel in control of their litigation. (Review of the previous edition) --The Consumer Action Group