Can You Recover the Fine You Pay on a Wrongfully Issued Ticket
My question involves vehicle registration or title in the state of: California. Los Angeles.
I was stopped in March of 2012 in Los Angeles and given a "fix it" ticket by the officer for an expired registration. I did not realize that my tags were expired, but believed him. I was in the process of leasing a new car at the time, and the car dealer said they would take care of the ticket for me. I went to renew my license this month (November 2012) and was told that there was a court judgement against me for never paying the fix it ticket and that the case had been sent to collections. The amount owed was now 3x the original. I called the car dealer and after much going around, he paid the fine to the collection agency this week. NOW, he has called me to tell me that he pulled the DMV records on that car and that the registration was never expired in the first place and that the officer was wrong in issuing the ticket. He would like me to see if I can recover the funds and if so, reimburse him. If he is correct, I have no problem doing that, but I have no idea where to begin. The collection agency has now collected the funds, so they are no help. The L.A. superior court is no help, and neither is the DMV. Everyone says, well you should have shown up in court back in March when you got the ticket and proven that it was incorrect...too late now. I see their point, but it seems there must be some redress. Any thoughts appreciated.
Re: Paid a Wrongful Fix-It Ticket. Can I Recover Funds
Whether or not it was "wrong" depends on the specific code section cited. What code section was allegedly violated?
The problem here is that you never appeared in court as scheduled, and no one took care of the citation as required. The time to challenge the matter may well have passed. About all you can do is call the court and see if there is some process that you can follow to go back before a court. However, I strongly suspect that this is not going to happen and that the matter will be satisfied by the payment to debt collections. Now everyone just has to wait until the collections agency sends word to the court.
Re: Paid a Wrongful Fix-It Ticket. Can I Recover Funds
The ticket says Code 4000. I suspected as much about not appearing in court and handling it at the time. I will go to the court and see if there is any option at this time though. Seems a shame.
Re: Paid a Wrongful Fix-It Ticket. Can I Recover Funds
You didn't bother to check your registration status after getting a ticket for expired registration? At the least you should have looked into renewing it since you were just told it was expired, which would have led you to the same info the dealership got.
Re: Paid a Wrongful Fix-It Ticket. Can I Recover Funds
Unfortunately I did not. The dealer said he would handle it, but it fell through the cracks. He only now discovered that it was not expired back then.
Re: Paid a Wrongful Fix-It Ticket. Can I Recover Funds
Quote:
Quoting
blannihan
Unfortunately I did not. The dealer said he would handle it, but it fell through the cracks. He only now discovered that it was not expired back then.
your time for arguing the merits of the case is over...maybe the cop did make a mistake; that's what trials are to examine. I don't think you can get any $$ back now.
Your lucky the dealer paid ...