Speeding 10 mph or less over the posted speed limit; provided all of the following are
true:
• The violation did not occur in a school zone; and
• There is not another moving traffic violation for the experience period (an isolated
Prayer for Judgement Continued (PJC) will not count as a prior conviction for the
purpose of this exception).

So, if the hypothetical driver charged with 58 in a 45 hired me, and the ticket was not in a school zone, and she had a clean record for the past three years, then one possible way to keep her insurance from going up would be to ask the D.A.’s office to reduce the charge to 54 in a 45 (nine mph over the speed limit, or “nine over”).  I would then enter a plea to 54 in a 45, and the driver’s insurance would not increase. (Note: Depending on the circumstances, I might be able to help this person even if she got the ticket in a school zone).

Have a ticket?  Give me a call — Don’t risk losing all those savings you got from changing insurance companies!   919-683-2175.  

Remember, the comp rate is based on your gross wages, meaning your wages before taxes and other deductions.

Many will say, “How can I live on 2/3 of my salary?”  Hopefully, this will only be a temporary situation — in fact the wage loss benefits that a person receives while completely out of work are called “temporary total disability,” or “TTD.”   More important, however, is the fact that workers compensation benefits tax free.  No taxes will be deducted from your workers compensation checks, nor will you have to pay any state or federal taxes on worker comp benefits you receive.

The above is a general summary of benefit calculations. There are a number of exceptions and additions that might apply to your case.  If you are wondering whether you are receiving the correct amount of comp benefits, please give me a call at 919-683-2175.       

Do you have a traffic case?  Call me now at 919-683-2175.  I can’t make a guarantee, but I will do my best to get a result that will be worth your money.

The first one is failure to take care of a ticket.  If you get a ticket, you’ve got to resolve it in some way.  If you just ignore it, the court will note you as having  ”failed to appear.”   If you don’t take care of the case within 20 days after that, the court will notify DMV, and they will send you a letter telling you that unless you resolve the case your license will be revoked.  If you still don’t resolve it, DMV revokes your license.  Then, three months  – or three years — later you get stopped at a license check or for another speeding ticket and are informed that your license is revoked, which is a very serious matter.  The officer may very well arrest a person charged with driving while license revoked (also known as “DWLR”).  Perhaps even worse, DWLR carries eight insurance points (which would result in a 220% increase in your insurance rates for three years).

At that point, I may get a call.  What we have to do is take care of both the old ticket and the new one.  We file a motion to put the old ticket back on the court docket and work out a plea.  Then, once that’s cleared up, the D.A. is often willing to allow the person to plead to the reduced charge of simply driving without a license (only one insurance point) or will consent to allowing the the person to have a prayer for judgment continued, which may not result in any insurance points.

Another common reason people get their license revoked is for speeding more than 15 mph over the limit while at the same time driving in excess of 55 mph. That’s an automatic thirty-day suspension.  (N.C.G.S. 20-16.1).

Yet another cause of a license suspension is getting convicted within a twelve month period of:  two charges of speeding in excess of 55 mph; or a charge speeding more that 55 mph and a charge of reckless driving, or a charge of speeding in excess of 55 mph and a charge of aggressive driving. (N.C.G.S. 20-16).

If any of the above situations might apply to you, please give me a call at 919-683-2175.  You may think you have no hope to keep your license, but all of us make mistakes and I have found that District Attorneys and judges are usually willing to work with people to help them avoid some of these harsh outcomes.  Sometimes we just just have to ask for a second — or a third — chance.

If you have been charged with  underage possession or with using a fake ID,  you may avoid a criminal record through a couple of diversion programs.  ”Diversion” means that a case is taken off the usual path leading to trial or guilty plea and the person is given the chance to keep their record clean by doing community service or going to classes. One program is the  ”First Offender’s Program.” As the name implies, your record must be clean (except perhaps a minor traffic ticket), and you can’t have been through the program before. Participants perform community service and pay court fees.  They also may have to write a short paper on substance abuse or have a substance abuse assessment, or both.  And, they must go up to six months without getting any new criminal charges of any kind.  Once the tasks are done and the required time has passed, the District Attorney will dismiss the charges, and the person will not have a conviction on their record.

Another program is the TASC program.  TASC stands for “Treatment Alternatives for Safer Communities.”  This program requires the person to be evaluated for drug or alcohol problems.  If no problem is found, then the person attends several evening classes and pays a fee for the classes.  If a problem is found, then the person attends drug or alcohol counseling.  In either event, once the classes or counseling are done, and the fees paid, then the D.A.’s office will dismiss the case. Usually, the TASC program lasts anywhere from two to six months.

If you have been charged with using a fake ID or underage possession,  give me a call at 919-683-2175.  I can help!

One of the main benefits in workers’ compensation is medical care.  In some ways, it’s better than “regular” health insurance because the carrier is required to pay 100% of the medical bills, including prescription drugs.  There are no medical or prescription co-pays in worker’s compensation cases.  That’s the good part.  Here’s the not-quite-so-good part:  An injured worker generally has to go to the doctor that the carrier chooses.  You may live in Durham and want to see an orthopedist at Duke or Triangle Orthopedics.  You can always ask the carrier if you can see the doctor you have in mind, but if the carrier wants you to go instead to a doctor in Raleigh or Chapel Hill, then that’s where you have to go if you want worker’s comp to pay for it. The doctor the carrier assigns to your case is called the “authorized treating physician.”  There are a few exceptions to this general rule.  One is if there is an emergency and you cannot contact the carrier to arrange to see the authorized doctor.  Another exception would be if you ask the carrier to let you go to the doctor of your choice, and the carrier agrees to that.  A third exception would be if you feel that the doctor assigned to your case is not helping you, then you may request the Industrial Commission to order the carrier to allow you to switch doctors.  The Industrial Commission may or may not grant that request, but you do have the right to ask.

Another exception arises when you get to the end of your healing period (which is called maximum medical improvement, or “MMI”).  If you have received an impairment rating, such as 15% to the back, or 20% to the foot, you are automatically entitled to a second opinion of the rating, at the carrier’s expense, by another doctor of your choice.  Which doctor to choose for the second opinion is a critical decision.  Please let me help you with that — just give me a call at 919-683-2175.  

Many District Attorneys will allow a person charged with a speeding ticket or other moving violation to plead responsible to the reduced charge of   “improper equipment,” also known as “IE.”  How is this helpful?  Improper equipment is a great result because it carries no driver’s license or insurance points.  It’s the next best thing to having the case dismissed.  Until a few years ago, improper equipment cases didn’t even show up on driving records — a person could get fifteen or twenty speeding tickets over the course of a few years, and each one could get an improper equipment.   Again, this was due to the feedback loop of IE’s not showing up on the driver’s record.  When the assistant district attorney (ADA) looked at the person’s record, it appeared clean, even though the driver had had many tickets reduced to improper equipment.  So, the legislature changed the law to require cases of improper equipment to show up on a person’s driving record.  Improper equipment still carries no points, but when the ADA sees that a driver got an IE a year or two ago, that ADA is not likely to give another one so soon.

As I said above, many District Attorneys will reduce cases to improper equipment.  Many, but not all.  The most notable exception around the Research Triangle Park (RTP) area is Wake County.  Improper equipment is available in Durham and Orange Counties, but not Wake.

When an IE is no longer available, there may be  other ways to keep a driver’s insurance from going up, such as “prayer for judgment continued,” which I  have discussed in another post.

Finally, some people wonder how it’s right to let someone who is charged with a speeding ticket or improper passing to plead to improper equipment.  The simple answer is that it is an outright act of grace or mercy on the part of the State and of the judge, who must approve all pleas.  And who among us does not need a bit or grace or mercy at least a few times in our lives? I know I do!

 Now, please do the proper thing and call or email me about helping you get an improper equipment!  919-683-2175. 

First, in North Carolina, the absolute statute of limitations for a comp claim is two (2) years.  This means that the claimant must file their claim with the North Carolina Industrial Commission or be barred from ever pursuing the claim.  However, there is another time limit (the “half” part of my description) called the “notice” requirement.  The  notice requirement says that a claimant must give written notice of their injury as soon as possible, but no later than thirty days after the injury.  The Industrial Commission likes to use forms, and there is a notice and claim form (called Form 18) that the injured person may download and fill out.  Once the injured person gives a copy of the Form 18 to their employer within thirty days, and at the same time sends the original to the the Industrial Commission, they have met both the notice and statute of limitations requirements.

For occupational diseases, the 30-day notice period and two-year statute of limitations begin to run when a claimant discovers they have an occupational disease.  That normally is the date the claimant’s doctor tells them that they have an occupational disease.   So, if your doctor informs you that the elbow pain you’ve had for the past six months is actually a case of “tennis elbow” caused by the constant motion you have to do for your job, you have thirty days from the time the doctor tells you that to do the Form 18.

If you would like to read what the Industrial Commission has to say about filing a claim, click here.

If you woke up this morning and remembered that you forgot to go to traffic court last week (or last last month, or last year, or five years ago), I probably can help you avoid some or all of the consequences.

The first situation I will discuss is the very-recently-missed court date.  By “recent” I mean within the past 20 days.  If it has been 20 days or less since you missed your court date, I can file a motion for a new court date.  Then, on that new date, I handle the case in the normal fashion, and you probably will have avoided the consequences of missing your court date.

If your missed court date was more than 20 days ago, the clerk of court will notify the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV).  DMV then will send you a letter stating that  unless you take care of the ticket by such-and-such a date, your license will be suspended. In that situation, you will need to get a new court date and resolve the ticket before the suspension date listed on DMV’s letter.

A rather unpleasant consequence that  kicks in after 20 days is the late fee.  Unless you have a really good excuse for missing your court date and then not resolving it within the first 20 days, the court adds a $200 late fee to your court costs.  (That’s pretty harsh,  especially since until about two years ago the late fee was only $50. . . .)  In any case, I sometimes can get the court to forgive the late fee, but you do need to have a good excuse — more than it just slipped your mind.

Sometimes people will call me, often from another state, saying that they went to their local DMV to get their license renewed and were told that their license was suspended because of an unresolved ticket in North Carolina from two — or ten! — years ago.  In that situation, the process is basically the same. I file a motion to reopen the old case, and we work out a plea reduction if possible, and enter the plea.  You then pay the fine and court costs (including the $200 late fee in almost all of those cases).

In those really old cases there is one more step before you are “cleared” to renew your license. in addition to whatever other license renewal fees DMV may charge, they charge an additional fee (at last check it was $50) to remove you from their list of persons who are prohibited from getting a license because of unresolved tickets.

So, it’s obviously a good idea to take care of your ticket on your court date.  But everybody makes mistakes, and if you’ve  missed your court date, there are several good ways to straighten things out.

P.S.

Here’s one final piece of advice on this issue.  Inform DMV when you move!  Clients often tell me that their license was suspended because they didn’t know their court date had changed or because they failed to take some action that DMV supposedly had notified them to take. When I call DMV to find out why my client had not gotten the notice, DMV will tell me that they sent the notice to the address that was on the client’s driver’s license.   The law requires all drivers to notify DMV within thirty days of moving.  As far as DMV is concerned, your official address for receiving official notices is the address that’s on your license. I know it’s a pain, but when you move, get your license renewed with your new address.