Mr & Misses Jones
38 Bath Road
Royal Wotton Basset
Swindon
SN4 7DF
Dear Mr and Misses Jones 21st November 2014
RE: Faulty kitchen doors
I am writing to you regarding your faulty kitchen doors, I would like to advise you on the best possible way to resolve the issue regarding legal action. There are a few options of which I shall elaborate on all. All court cases suing or wanting compensation is known as a case in a civil court, there is criminal and civil cases. Your case is of course a civil case.
In law there is something we use called the court hierarchy, basically it is a hierarchy of all the courts, the first and lowest court being the county court. The county court deals with small claims of and up to £25,000. That is then followed by the High court, this deals with claims from £25,000 upwards of no fixed upper bound, it also deals with criminal court cases. Then there is the Court of appeal, your case can not start here this court, as the name suggests, is a court only to appeal a claim if unsuccessful in either the county or high court. The court its self decides whether the appeal is allowed. The very highest court of all is the Supreme Court this court again is an appeal only court, however mainly used for higher end claims. As far as I can see, you are claiming for faulty kitchen doors, the kitchen cost around £25,000 as stated. If it is only the kitchen doors of which is faulty, you’re most likely to be in the small claims court, as you’re not claiming for the whole kitchen, retrospectively, if the whole kitchen has been done badly and unprofessionally and it has caused external damage, your claim could exceed £25,000 and then could end up in the High court, however the county court is still an option.
In a civil court case, there are three tracks, small claims, fast track and multi-track. A small claims case is usually a claim up to £10,000 and you must fight the case yourself without and lawyers in the court room. The final hearing is informal, and the strict rule of evidence is not applied. In a fast track case, the claim is between £10,000 and £25,000 however once again boundaries may vary slightly up or down depending on the case, e.g. personal injury, you may employee lawyers etc. and if you win the claim you can be reimbursed for legal/court costs however there is a £600 maximum claim, so if you spend more on legal costs, you won’t see any more than £600 back, and the legal costs can only be reimbursed if you win the case, otherwise you could have to pay for the other persons legal costs.
The third track, is called Multi-track. This is intended for more complex, higher and more important cases. Any case not allocated to either the small claims track or fast track will be dealt with on the multi-track. The courts are expected to adopt a flexible approach to ensure that each case is dealt with in an appropriate way. If the parties in a case that is likely to be allocated to the multi-track agree proposals for the management of the case and the court considers that the proposals are suitable then the court could approve them without the need for a directions hearing (so they can categorise themselves with consent) A Multi-track claim varies from £25,000 and there is no upper boundary, so even a multi-million pound case would be in the multi-track, there are a few exceptions, if
