Armchair lawyers
Armchair lawyers is the term parking companies use to belittle the volunteers helping the motoring public fight private parking charges.
They deride them on their websites, on their news pages, on their appeal rejection letters. “Ignore the forums, don’t listen to the armchair lawyers, they’re in it for their own agenda”; these are the sorts of statements that are made.
The BPA are between a rock and hard place with the genuine pre-estimate of loss issue at POPLA. The BPA’s own appeals service consistently finds that the parking companies are not able to demonstrate a financial loss, as required by their Code of Practice, thus putting their business model in question. How long can the BPA, or the DVLA for that matter, ignore the fact that so many of their members are consistently failing to meet their obligation to follow the Code of Practice?
And yes, it was those silly armchair lawyers that came up with the GPEOL appeal point that these legally trained assessors are upholding.
Solicitors and barristers are also doing quite well at the moment. Parking companies are instructing £300/day hired solicitors to represent them, and others are being represented by £4,000/day QCs. Why? Because the claims aren’t easy for the parking companies to win. People are turning up with strong arguments given to them by those armchair lawyers. Worse still, some of these armchair lawyers even voluntarily turn up in court and act as lay representatives for the motorists.
But, the legal professionals surely win right? Well no, actually. Where there has been a lay representative present, the parking companies have lost 100% of the cases. Even, when they’ve brought along a QC!
So actually, these armchair lawyers are actually quite a concern for the private parking industry. In fact, they could completely destroy their business model.