Violation / Traffic tickets
Violation / Traffic tickets are actually quasi-criminal charges brought under the Provincial Offence Act. As a result, you are entitled to be presumed innocent and the police have to prove the charge beyond a reasonable doubt. Although they will not result in jail time, or a criminal record, violation tickets do leave an entry on a driving record, often result in “points” that will increase the cost of insurance, and may lead to a driving prohibition.
Many employers now look at driving records as a form of additional due diligence to learn more about their prospective employees. For instance, a driving record may disclose an entry for “Driving without Due Care and Attention” or “Excessive Speeding” which may result in an employer questioning your integrity or judgment.
The most common offences that are issued are: 1) speeding; 2) use of an electronic device; 3) disobey traffic control device (i.e. no Left turn); and 4) drive contrary to restriction (i.e. too many passengers as an “N” driver). As a good rule of thumb, only moving violations carry points with them – however that does not mean that the other offences are cheap. One of the most expensive violations is for driving without insurance / expired insurance.
For commercial drivers, such as truckers, and taxi operators, having points on your driving record may result in termination from your employment. Commercial carriers – such as trucking companies – may face large increases in the cost of insurance as a result of CVSE / NSC points For new drivers, driving prohibitions can be issued by RoadSafetyBC after only one driving infraction! This will restart the time before you can apply for a class 5 driver’s license.
Although you are presumed innocent and the police have the burden of proving your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, your odds of success greatly increase f you take the following important steps:
- Once you have exited your vehicle take a video or photographs of all important features that are involved in your case – such as any speed limits, construction signs, obstructions by trees, where your vehicle was parked, etc. You can usually use Google Maps and streetview to present a picture, however photographs taken on the day of are the best – especially if there is an obstruction or temporary sign because of construction. Usually those important details will not be caught by Google Maps.
- Dispute your violation ticket within 30 days and do not pay it. If you do not, you will be deemed to have plead guilty to the charge and it will immediately show up on your driving record. If you find yourself in the position where you have accidentally paid it, it’s important to contact us right away so we can try to set aside your deemed guilty plea. One of the important factors the courts will look at is how quickly you acted after you discovered your deemed guilty plea.
- Make sure you keep your address current with the Violation Ticket Centre in case you move. Updating your address with ICBC will not update your address with the Courts and they will only send a Notice of Hearing to the old address. If you fail to attend Court because you did not receive your Notice of Hearing you will be deemed to have plead guilty to all the charges – even if the officer wasn’t there! Again, at that point it’s very important to contact us to apply to set aside your deemed guilty plea.
- Prepare for trial by requesting disclosure from the police agency. Once you get your Notice of Hearing it will disclose the officer’s name and their detachment. Since you are presumed innocent it is important to know how the officer will intend to prove your guilt. Errors in the police officer’s notes, or the complete absence of notes altogether may give you a winning strategy.
Our Traffic Ticket Lawyers have a proven track record in successfully beating all forms of violation tickets at trial – which does include beating speeding tickets and use of an electronic device. Some are beaten on a substantive challenge while other tickets are beaten by challenging it on a more technical basis, such as lack of sufficient details in the charge itself, and yet others are won by excluding evidence or because your Charter rights were breached.
Depending on your risk tolerance and the odds of success, we are also able to negotiate creative solutions that avoids points and driving prohibitions. We do a fairly large volume of cases so we use our previous success in winning tickets and our rapport with police officers to leverage a positive outcome for our clients.
In addition to challenging tickets, we also act as counsel on test cases that challenge the constitutionality of various provisions of the Offence Act, the Evidence Act, or the Motor Vehicle Act. If your case engages one of the sections that we are currently looking for a test case for, we will let you know.
If you represented yourself and were found guilty, we act as appellate counsel to seek to overturn your conviction. Traffic ticket appeals are generally heard within 6 months in Supreme Court and are usually a simplified appeal as the transcripts are usually not longer than 30 pages.
If you are still within the time limits to dispute the violation ticket we take all necessary steps and you do not have to worry about anything. We dispute the ticket and correspond with the appropriate police agency and directly with the police officer ahead of the trial to see if we can resolve your matter quickly and in your favour.
Depending on the evidence that you will to give under oath, your involvement may be minimal and you may not need to attend Court so you will not need to take a day off work. In other circumstances, our involvement extends beyond the legal arguments and extends to gathering evidence to corroborate your narrative.
If you have been deemed to plead guilty because you either failed to dispute the violation ticket in time, or failed to attend at Court, we will usually have materials for you to submit to Court to seek to overturn the deemed guilty plea within two (2) days. It’s important on those cases to move very quickly.
If you wish to appeal a decision, the first thing we will require is a copy of the reasons for judgment and preferably a copy of the transcript of the trial evidence. Unless the reasons for judgment of the presiding judicial justice reveal an obvious error, we can only gauge your odds of success after reviewing the whole of the trial evidence – which again is generally less than 30 pages. There are important time limits to meet in order to secure your appeal and advance it – otherwise it could get dismissed for failure to follow the time lines. Because of the need to have a transcript of the reasons for judgment we generally need at least two (2) weeks before your filing deadline in order to properly draft your Notice of Appeal. If transcripts are not available prior to the filing deadline, we will be able to file a fairly generic one to preserve your limitation but it will have to be changed in the near future.
If your trial takes place in Robson Square, Richmond, Surrey, New Westminster, or Port Coquitlam, we charge $500 + tax as a flat fee, regardless of the number of appearances for each violation ticket. It does not matter if you have one charge on your ticket, or three.
If your trial takes place in North Vancouver or Abbotsford, we charge $750 + tax as a flat fee per, plus $250 + tax for each additional appearance, if there is more than one. This may occur if the officer is unable to attend and an adjournment is granted by the presiding judicial justice.
For trials in Chilliwack and beyond the biggest cost is the mileage and so a discussion needs to take place as to the client’s objectives and the importance of the ticket. Sometimes it makes sense to hire local counsel to run the trial, and for our office to handle drafting all the legal arguments and working on the high level strategy. Other times the stakes and collateral consequences are too high and we will conduct the trial ourselves. We do travel to all corners of the Province to run these trials. The furthest our office has gone is to Golden, B.C. for a ½ hour traffic ticket trial.
For applications to set aside a deemed guilty plea, we charge $500 + tax.
Appeals can be quoted on a flat fee basis, but only after a review of the reasons for judgment along with the transcripts of the trial evidence which are done on an hourly basis and usually only take a couple of hours. Several factors will impact the estimate for the balance of the work, which is based on our perception of how much time will need to put in to advance your appeal – whether the error is one of law, or is one of misapprehension; the length of the trial evidence; whether you wish to apply to introduce new evidence on appeal; and whether you wish to apply for a trial de novo.
Contact us either at (604) 259-6200 or using the form below for assistance with Violation / Traffic tickets
The foregoing provides legal information and does not constitute legal advice. As an analogy, legal information are equivalent to learning the rules of chess, and legal advice is the tactics and strategy that goes into winning a game. Lawyers are trained to give valuable advice that is specific to you after learning about the details of your case. Readers are cautioned that they will rarely achieve the best outcome for their case without actual advice. A consultation is often the best next step to take.