refusal to cooperate with county court direction?

This may not actually be in the remit of rightsnet so before i start i understand if this post is removed, but i thought i would ask anyway.

I have a client who has been awarded £5072.00 in the county court.

The respondent was told to pay 10 pounds per week, refused and said she would pay 7.50 pr week

she has paid 15.00 in total and has now said my client can get stuffed as she isnt paying him a penny more.

my client is a pensioner and is angry that she seems to be allowed to do this with impunity.

Any ideas if my client can actually DO anything about this? The respondent has no property and doesnt work so a charging order/attatchment order no good.

As debt is over £5000 then he cant request a warrant for execution either. He feels massively aggrieved as he is the innocent party and wonders what the point is of such penalties if they cant be enforced.

As i said earlier rightsnet advisers probably wont cover this one but if you dont ask you dont get!!

Thanks - as always.

Debts of over £5,000 can be enforced by the High Court but there are fees.  I think you apply to the Count Court for a referral.  If she has anything in the bank in her name only he could apply for a garnishee order to effectively seize its contents.  But, if she has nothing there may not be much he can do in practical terms.  However, I’m no expert here and one of the money advice people might have some ideas. It doesn’t sit right that she can just ignore with impugnity the judgement of a court.  I’d see a solicitor.

Yes, enforcement in the High Court could be an option, if the debtor has defaulted on the CCJ. See leaflets EX322 and N293A. There is a perception amongst many creditors, whether well-founded or not, that High Court bailiffs are more effective than county court bailiffs. In some circumstances it can even be cheaper. And, the procedure for getting a fi fa warrant set aside is not as trivial as it is for a County Court warrant.

At the end of the day though, your client needs to weigh up the costs, against how likely it is that bailiffs can recover sufficient goods to cover the fees and the debt (even if they can levy on something, values at auction tend to be low).

It would be unusual for there to be any mileage in contempt-of-court type actions, if your client was thinking along those lines.

Another option apart from action through the courts could be to employ a debt collection agency, or even to cut any losses and sell the debt on to one.

The debtor’s attitude certainly seems to be obnoxious.  However - difficult to accept though it is - it illustrates that it may be best not to spend the money on going to Court unless you have some reasonable idea the debtor actually has funds.  In this instance, if the creditor has reason to believe there are funds action such as garnishee (I think it’s called third party order now) or debt collector might be worthwhile; also it used to be possible to get the Court to order an oral examination of the creditor to determine his/her funds & financial circumstances but I’m not sure whether this still applies or whether it could be done in the County Court for a £5K+ sum.  The Court office could advise.

Of course, any Court action involves the creditor spending more money on fees without any guarantee of success.

However, if the debtor doesn’t work & has no assets it may be that he/she is on benefits & genuinely has no surplus funds.  In that case, going back to Court is likely to be throwing good money after bad.

I’d endorse Derek’s point. The first thing you should always do - and any solicitor would tell a client this - is that you should think very long and hard before suing somebody who is not likely to be able to pay. Enforcing your judgement is entirely up to you and no-one will do it for you.

The only bright spot, which is not very bright in fact, is that you have 6 years to enforce a judgement, so if the defendant’s circumstances change, you can go back later.

Thanks to everyone for your replies.

Looks like my client is up a certain creek without a certain paddling instrument. In hindsight he should have sought legal advice before taking court action in the first place.
I am still shocked that the law can’t step in though regarding enforcement, as there seems no point in a court of this type making a judgement that can be so easily ignored. Such is life!

The principle behind most of civil law in England and Wales - especially contract - is that parties are free to make their own damfool agreements if they see fit, and in certain circumstances the court will help them to enforce those agreements. They don’t go beyond checking whether the criteria for a valid legal agreement arise and have no way of checking the defendant’s means at the litigation stage itself.

The existence of consumer contract law and all its ramifications is an extension of basic contract law in favour of the little guy. But even all the consumer protection in the world can’t make a person who has waltzed off with your life savings and stuck it in a bank in the Bahamas pay up (well not always anyway, and never cheaply). The law only goes so far in protecting people against themselves.

For other sorts of legal action, that’s why people have insurance, so that they can pay.

And as CAB advisers, we spend a lot of time helping people to pay off their debts at a level they can actually afford

You have six years to obtain judgement for a civil debt, but I wasn’t aware there was a further time limit on starting enforcement action?

Anyway, I agree with the comments on the apparatus of the state not automatically stepping in to enforce someone’s civil claim. It seems an injustice in many cases, eg where an employer ignores a tribunal order to pay, but in civil matters for most creditors, the risk of non payment is something they should take into account when they expose themselves to the risk in the first place. For the “blameless” - but uninsured - personal creditor, being owed money by someone who has none is, as you say, just life.