If you have a wreck and the officer thinks it’s your fault, they may give you a ticket for failure to reduce speed, or failure to yield the right of way, or some other “safe movement” violation. Hopefully, the accident is not too serious, and your main concern is whether it will cause your insurance to go up! If you’ve gotten an accident-related ticket, I can probably help you get it dismissed. Usually, I contact your insurance company and ask them to send me a letter stating that they have paid for the damages to the the other person’s car, or have settled any personal injury claim that has been made against you. I then take that letter to an assistant D.A. and usually they will dismiss the ticket. Depending upon how much your insurance company paid the other driver or injured person to resolve the case, that dismissal may keep your insurance rates from going up. If you have gotten an accident-related ticket, please give me a call at 919-683-2175 so we can figure out the best way to handle your specific case.
License Suspensions –Common Causes
There are all kinds of reasons that a person’s license may get suspended. Here are some of the more common ones I see.
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.
“Oops! I missed my court date.”
Missing a court date can be frustrating. I’d be happy to help you out! Give me a call at 919-683-2175
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.
