Accessibility options


When it's the solicitors who should be taken to court

When it's the solicitors who should be taken to court



I am a director of a small landscaping business in Northamptonshire. In the middle of September we received a faxed letter from Anthony Jayes Solicitors of Tottenham Court Road, London saying that they had applied for court action to recover a debt of £2,500 on behalf of their clients. The letter was addressed to my company but at an address in north London. I contacted Anthony Jayes to point out they were chasing the wrong company and they said the mistake would be rectified immediately.

However, two weeks later two of our suppliers cut our line of credit because a check had revealed a CCJ against us. We are tendering for work with some local authorities and I am worried that the incorrect record will lead to lost work. Can you help? LB, Paulerspury, Northants

Advertisement starts



Advertisement ends

The anxious times you are experiencing, due to Anthony Jayes Solicitors, are completely understandable. It has admitted to making an error when applying for a default judgment against a sole trader with the same trading name as your limited company. It has refused, point blank, to speak to Capital Letters despite having your written authority to do so.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority, the body that is supposed to regulate more than 100,000 solicitors in England and Wales, says it cannot get involved because you are not actually a client of Anthony Jayes. In the meantime, the judgment in error has now been set aside and Registry Trust Limited, the official keeper of the register of judgments, says that the CCJ will be completely wiped from the records. You have been keeping a log of the costs incurred and the time spent in dealing with this unfortunate matter, and you should now write to Anthony Jayes, giving 14 days in which you expect to receive reasonable compensation.

It has offered you absolutely nothing, which is unreasonable. If it fails to do the decent thing, you should take out a small claim for damages for negligence in the county court. It will be interesting to report the outcome.

Answering your letters this week is Steve Playle, Trading Standards officer and team leader at Surrey Trading Standards Service.

We welcome letters but regret we cannot answer individually. Email: capital.letters@guardian.co.uk. Please include a daytime phone number.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2009

Advertisement starts



Advertisement ends

a high street scene

Consumer news

Get the latest on consumer issues and trends - from property, rip-offs and pensions to fraud, political angles and rising prices

Features and analysis

Top quality stories and analysis of the burning money issues of the day - get the bigger picture
Share prices
Shares news
Keep bang up-to-date with the latest news affecting share prices and the stockmarket
Family

Free guides and brochures

There's a whole range of useful information to choose from including investing, retirement and family finances
Skip to page content | Text onlyGraphical version of this page

Tiscali Quicklinks. Please visit our Accessibility Page for a list of the Access Keys you can use to find your way around the site, skip directly to the main navigation, to the page content, or to more links within money.

web |  shopping |  this site |  video |  local services

Page Footer


Access keys


You will need to use different key combinations in order to use access keys depending on your internet browser, find out which on our accessibility page.
  • (0) Navigate to Accessibility page.
  • (1) Navigate to Home page.
  • (2) Navigate to My email.
  • (3) Navigate to My Account.
  • (4) Navigate to Site Map page.
  • (5) Navigate to Contact us page.
  • (6) Navigate to Members channel.
  • (7) Navigate to Services channel.
  • (8) Navigate to News & Info channel.
  • (9) Navigate to Entertainment channel.
  • ([) Skip down to the Primary navigation block.
  • (]) Skip down to the more links within this section block.
  • (=) Bypass all navigation and jump to the content.
  • (x) Text only version of this page.
Background images used:
furniture images used in the site icons used in the site images used in the header