Am I right recalling that the respondent had until the end of September to submit their response in regards to the pending possible court action? Anyone seen if they have yet at all?
When a Claim Form is issued the claimant has four months to serve it on the defendant, otherwise it expires. It is quite a common tactic for proceedings to be commenced but not served. This increases the claimant’s negotiation leverage if the parties are in settlement discussions. Once the Claim Form and more detailed Particulars of Claim are served the defendant has 2 weeks to file an acknowledgment of service (in which the defendant usually gives notice that the Claim will be defended) and then a further two weeks to file and serve a Defence. It is common for the time for service of the Defence to be extended by several weeks by agreement or by court order. The Defence needs to respond to each point pleaded in the Particulars of Claim on a point by point basis. At this point I am not aware of any publicly available information about the point that the Claim has reached.
