Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
I have had some additional pointers from someone with legal experience.
In other words, if there was no EC261 then you would still have a claim under boring old "breach of contract". You paid BA £800 to get you to Costa Rica and back and BA only did half of that. So in a sense BA can either argue about EC261 or contract fulfillment, whereas you are at liberty to make both points. I think that would be fairly obvious to a judge, but it would be worth in your counter claim making that point crystal clear.
The process now is you get a directions questionnaire from the court, and you have to ensure BA has seen all your documentation / counter claim at least 2 weeks before the court date, which I suspect is some way off yet. BA may apply for it to heard in the Uxbridge area, but you are at liberty to ask for a hearing somewhere local to you after BA makes that submission. Most of the work is done during the hearing, so there is no need to drip feed the court with every email, but just send the skeleton and final appendices to BA and the court about 16 days before the hearing.
I don't think it is too late to claim for food and telephone calls or at least mention that in your counter claim. There is no requirement for receipts, you can simply say what it is, BA can challenge rhat and the judge is there to work out what is reasonable. Make sure you are not missing out on other reclaimable items such as parking, photocopying, postage, phone calls. The judge may well want to take BA to the cleaners be s/he can't add anything you didn't mention to BA 2 weeks before the hearing.
Thank you. That's really helpful. Yes, we had been looking into BA's breach of contract of carriage, just wasn't sure if that was the best angle to take.
Great to know about being able to mention other expenses, we will definitely include these in our counter.
I'm really sorry, but i'm struggling to find our court date on the MCOL portal? Please could someone help me find it. I'm worried we'll miss the deadline for sending our counter and obviously don't want to do this. Also, how do I request a directions questionnaire from the court? BA sent their defence to the court's email address so do I just email them on that chain and ask the questions I'm asking here? I feel like I must be being stupid and missing something obvious but I just can't see a court date or deadline for us on the MCOL portal.
Thank you