What is a plea?
A plea is a communication in writing that specifically deals with the allegations of a creditor (plaintiff) point by point, either in seriatum, or selectively seriatum, and then providing for the provisions of the remainder of the allegations.
It is the defendant’s chance to state his/her case without having to commit to an oath, and with the opportunity to enter a counterclaim against the creditor (plaintiff).
In the plea a defendant can either deny or admit, on the one hand, or on the other, “confess and avoid”: confess, in order to avoid.
The plea must be entered within 20 days from when a notice of intention to defend was entered.
So, this means that: defendant receives summons and thus, s/he has to enter a notice of intention to defend within 10 days.
Once the notice of intention to defend was served on the plaintiff lawyers and entered into the court as an official court document, the defendant as from that moment has to enter a plea within 20 days. The defendant thus, has only 20 days to formulate a plea.
But before the formulating of the plea, there is something extremely peculiar which defendants have to look out for:
In the section (of the summons): “Particulars of Claim” there are paragraphs that contain averments & arguments as allegations or out-right statements, and they are being used & stated in such a way to create the “impression” that the defendant is factually liable for a liquid amount of money to the creditor bank (plaintiff). Those allegations & averments have to be looked at with discernment, in order to carefully distinguish between those that are the most obvious the plaintiff is counting on as being correct on the one hand, and the defendant being wrong on the other. The most obvious issues, if not fully disclosed by plaintiff, are issues for which a defendant can ask for discovery against the plaintiff, in the appropriate manner, for the correct purposes, which are to enable the defendant to formulate a plea. If a plaintiff refuses to reasonably respond to a request for discovery by a defendant, the defendant can lawfully ask the court to compel the plaintiff to provide the required information as evidence, or, dismiss the case against the defendant.
Once that discovery was compelled by the court, defendant waits for the evidence from plaintiff, and once received, formulates a plea. However, by that time, the plaintiff’s over-all impression the court has of it, has as a result been tainted. The reason for that is because what has transpired, was entered into PUBLIC RECORD. And for that reason, the plaintiff knows that he will suffer further exploitation furthermore down the line, which will also be put onto public record. And for banks especially, it is a bitter pill to swallow. Plaintiff lawyers HATE it discovery against them with a passion.
If the answers from the plaintiff is not satisfactory in order to enable the defendant to formulate a worthwhile plea, the defendant can formulate a Rule 23 complaint against the plaintiff in open court, asking for a hearing on the matter. And then, the defendant becomes applicant, and the plaintiff becomes respondent. And the plaintiff is then in the proverbial dogbox to explain themselves, and to convince the court why not to dismiss the case against the defendant.
What is the bottom-line:
- make the opposite lawyers work! In the process of them working (for a change), their walk won’t necessarily be their talk, and vice-versa. They WILL make mistakes in response, as they have previously been entrenched in quite a different habit of convenience. Lawyers especially do not respond well to being taken out of their grain (professional comfort zone).
- Elicit information from plaintiff lawyers thru the legal means to one’s disposal and hold them responsible through the legal means to one’s disposal.
- Pounce on their mistakes, and on their momentary / intermittent lapse of reason or focus, because as they do, they slip up more.
Thru the experiences we’ve encountered so far, it was commonly amazing and amazingly common to see the unfolding of chaos on account of lawyers who could not control their own emotions & common sense. Quite a few of them have been exposed as just that, already. The species we call lawyers does not have that much intrinsic capacity for planning while under embarrassment & pressure. Seeing these effects has been “poetry in motion” at times.
Fair assumption about lawyers
And we are suspicious of the fact that it might possibly be true, the notion that, at university, lawyers are not, were not and have never actually been trained for the required knowledge and on the effective conduct of dealing with a conversant defendant. They actually never needed it in the first place, because what they had worked toward then, was always to become part of a system that operates on-clique, on their own clock, on doing harm to others, and that is all they know. They do not know what we know. If they had had the knowledge of dealing effectively with conversant defendants, they would have advised their plaintiff banker clients differently, and would have done so on that same level of intellect, thinking and reasoning, as that is what they are there for, amongst other things, like litigation, negotiation and issuing of court documents.
Remember this important adage: “when we change the way we look at things, the things we look at, will change”. With this adage in mind, it thus stands to reason that, when defendant receives summons from plaintiff (bank / lawyer / liquidator), through sheriff, defendant is actually an educated winner already, and the plaintiff does not know it as yet.