I have received a Judgment from the Court. What shall I do?
1. Check that it is genuine. It should show your name as a Defendant, with your proper address, or the full and proper name of your Limited Company. There should be a Claim number and the name of a Court in the top right corner. Slightly below on the right hand side, is the word ‘seal’, and there should be a round seal with the name of the Court and a Crown at the top of that seal usually in red. Telephone the Court from which the Judgment is sealed to ensure that the Judgment is real.
2. If it is genuine, do not ignore the Judgment. On Judgment debts more than £5,000 interest usually is charged at 8% per annum pursuant to Section 69 of the County Courts Act 1984.
3. A County Court Judgment is registered against your name on the Register of County Court Judgments, 28 days after the Order is made, and not paid in full by then. That County Court Judgment, or CCJ will then adversely affect your credit score and therefore your ability to obtain credit is likely to be compromised and therefore restricted.
If you owe the debt, sometimes it is better to simply pay and avoid an adverse entry on your Credit record.
If you pay the debt after the CCJ is registered, you can ask the Judgment creditor to write to the Court and have the Judgment against you, marked as satisfied. You can then write to the Register of County Court Judgments and for a fee currently of £15 you can ask that the Judgment is also marked satisfied with the credit agencies.
From the date of Judgment, the adverse entry will remain for 6 years, after which time it will be removed.
4. If you received Judgment, and no letter of claim, chaser letters, or Claim Form and Particulars of Claim, and you have a reasonable prospect of successfully defending the Claim, you can apply to set aside the default Judgment. If any of the ingredients above are missing, you are unlikely to be successful in setting aside a default Judgment. There may be all sorts of reasons not to have received any prior notice, including documents being sent to the wrong address, the address cited being wrong, postal strikes, problems with post generally. Just remember that the Claim Form is usually sent by the Court, and if the address is wrong, it is usually returned to the Court marked ‘inaccurate address’, or addressee gone away’, or ‘not known at this address’.
5. Do not delay or ignore a Judgment received. Do not delay or ignore applying to Court to set aside a default Judgment. The Court will want to see that you took steps to address the Judgment as soon as it reasonably came to your attention.
6. If in doubt, seek independent legal advice.
The writer is a Solicitor-Advocate, Partner and Head of Litigation at Darlingtons, a member of the London Solicitors’ Litigation Association, and a visiting Associate Professor of Law at Brunel University.
