Claimant User Guide
Starting your claim
Before you start making a claim online, you must have the following information available:
- The full title, name and address, including postcode of the person (s) you wish to make a claim against
Name
You must provide the following information about yourself and the defendant according to the capacity in which you are suing and in which the defendant is being sued.
When suing or being sued as: -
an individual
You must enter his or her unabbreviated name where known including their first name and any middle name, their last name and the title by which she or he is known (i.e. Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr., etc). You must also provide their residential address (including postcode). Where the defendant is a proprietor of a business, a partner in a firm or an individual sued in the name of a club or other unincorporated association, the address for service should be the usual or last known place of residence or principal place of business of the company, firm or club or other unincorporated association.
Where the individual is:
trading under another name
You must enter his or her full unabbreviated name where known and then the title by which he or she is trading, e.g. “Mr John Smith T/As Smith’s Groceries”.
suing or being sued in a representative capacity
you must say what that capacity is e.g. Mr Joe Bloggs as the representative of Mrs Sharon Bloggs (deceased)”.
suing or being sued in the name of a club or other unincorporated association
Add the words “sued on behalf of” followed by the name of the club or other unincorporated association.
An unincorporated business – a firm
In the case of a partnership (other than a limited liability partnership) you must enter the full name of the business followed by suffix “ a firm.” Enter the name of the firm followed by the words “ a firm” e.g. Bandbox- a firm and an address including postcode for service. This may either be one of the partner’s residential addresses or the principal or last known place of business of the firm.
A company registered in England and Wales or a Limited Liability Partnership
In the case of a registered company or limited liability company or a limited liability partnership, you must enter full name of the company of partnership followed by the appropriate suffix i.e. Ltd, Plc, LLP. You must provide an address, including postcode which is either the company’s registered office or any place of business in England and Wales that has real or the most connection with the claim e.g. shop where goods were bought.
A corporation (other than a company)
Enter the full name of the corporation and any suffix if appropriate and the address including postcode in England and Wales which is either its principal office or any other place where the corporation carries on activities and which has a real connection with the claim.
An overseas company (defined by s 744 of the Companies Act 1985)
You must enter the company’s full name and any suffix is appropriate and address in England and Wales including postcode. The address must either be the registered address in England and Wales under s 691 of the Act or the address in England and Wales of the place of business having a real, or the most connection with the claim.
Address
You must provide the full address including postcode for yourself and the defendant. The postcode for any address in the United Kingdom may be obtained free from www.royalmail.com [hyperlink]
If you are not able to supply a full postcode , you cannot issue your claim through Money Claim On line.
(If you do attempt to commence your claim through Money Claim Online, andfail to supply the postcode, the claim may be struck out by a district judge and you will not be entitled to a refund of the court fee).
Instead, if you are not able to supply a full postcode, you will have to issue your claim at your local county court and ask a judge for permission to serve the claim with this information missing. There is no additional fee for this, but if you omit a postcode and fail to ask permission of the judge, the court will not allow your claim to be served on the defendant until you supply the missing postcode or a judge permits service without it.
- The exact amount you wish to claim including any contractual or statutory interest - see leaflet EX302 on Her Majesty's Court Service web-site;
- Particulars/Facts relating to the claim e.g. dates, times, events, invoice numbers etc
Particulars of claim
MCOL is designed for, on the face of it, straightforward money claims and the particulars of the claim for these types of claim are generally fairly concise. Please note that there is a limited amount of space for details.You must be able to set out your particulars of claim in no more than 24 lines totalling no more than 1080 characters (including space and punctuation). Please note that the only punctuation you can use is full stops or commas - all other punctuation is treated by our system as illegal characters, including £ signs. You may wish to write out your claim, in draft, before completing it on MCOL, to make sure you do not exceed the 1080 character limit. You may be able to edit out unnecessary words or phrases. The MCOL particulars of claim screen has a character counter to help you. You cannot however copy and paste into the site from another program.
If you cannot restrict your particulars of claim to 1080 characters, you cannot use MCOL.
- Your credit/debit card details - i.e. card number, card type, expiry date, cardholders name; and
- An email address.