Bryce wrote:

> From: plug-discuss-admin@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> [mailto:plug-discuss-admin@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us]On Behalf Of Nathan
> England
> Sent: Monday, December 03, 2001 10:23 PM
> To: plug-discuss
> Subject: OT: Photo Radar
>
> I apologize now for this being way off topic, but being such a good
> discussion group, I know some one here will have some information on
> this.
>
> My father recieved a ticket in the mail from a photo radar..

I got one of them last year from Scottsburg.  About a week later I got something in the mail from some guy in Glendale who makes a tidy
living collecting $40 a pop for info about this.  I took the bait and found the info quite interesting.

I won't go into details, but there's something called "due process under the law" and most of us are totally ignorant about our due
process rights.  These "tickets" are not.  But if you respond, guess what?  You just acknowledged the validity of the accusation.  They
don't have to prove anything at that point.  That's why regular traffic cops require you to sign the ticket -- not to admit your guilt,
but to acknowledge that you received the citation and agree to be prosecuted for it.  They have you sign the ticket to make sure your
"due process rights" are NOT being violated and that you get a speedy hearing -- that's the law.  You get to (continue to) preserve your
rights by showing up in court.  And if you don't show up (which you don't really have to do), you waive further rights.

The law, and the people who practice, it are really confounding in many ways.  It's not really logical in the usual sense, although
there is a definite "logic" to it.  You just have to shift your perspective a bit.


For instance, I got a notice from the court in early July that a law suit filed against me in early Feb was dismissed for lack of
service.  Two weeks later I was served.  I called the court and the person I talked with sounded perplexed -- like, why is this guy
serving a summons for a case that had been dismissed?  Somebody must have "forgot" to tell him.  I called a lawyer -- two, in fact --
who advised me that my best course of action was to do nothing.  There was no case before the court (since it was dismissed), so any
action I might take would serve to put it back in court.  Besides, I was told that the Court's Admin person would probably catch it and
toss it off the docket.  Well, a month or so later, I got a notice that these guys (the ones who "forgot" to tell their process server
that the case was dismissed) were asking the court to issue a Default Judgement since I'd failed to respond in a timely manner!  I
called the attorney again, and was again told that there's no case, no to worry.  Ok, fine.  A month later, I got a notice that the
Court had granted the Default Judgement.  I called the attorney back, and he said this was really strange, and that I simply needed to
file a "motion to set-aside" the judgement.  Easy for him to say.  I didn't want to pay his fee, so I spent a few hours at the Law
Library downtown and wrote up my own Motion and Order (it really wasn't that bad) and submitted them to the court.  In the process, I
called three times for different things, and asked all of them if there was going to be any kind of filing fee, and was told "No".  I
got down there to file it, and was told, "That will be $94 please -- check, cash, or money orders only."  No plastic.  Grrr....  So I
filed my "motion to set aside" and waited.  Ultimately the order was signed and it's gone -- for now.

The guys who "forgot" about the dismissal responded that if the court was going to set aside the default, then they should also have the
decency to set aside the dismissal, re-instate the case, and just give me 20 days to respond, since I WAS, after all, served (after the
fact).  Their most potent argument?  It would be a waste of the court's time to have them re-file the suit and start all over.  HA!  If
they were really concerned about wasting the court's time, why did they conveniently "ignore" the dismissal in the first place???  Why
did they wait until the statutory 120 day period to perform service had expired before they made any real effort to even find me?  Why
did they waste the Court's time with ANY of this???

Hint: because it works!  It works because most people don't know their rights and because they don't take the proper or timely steps to
preserve those rights.  I get the sense that most legal documents we'll ever see (as potential defendants) are designed to give the
appearance that we NEED to respond -- to exactly what they are saying.  I'm finding that in many such cases, it is the response itself
that either causes us to waive our rights, or forces us to proceed in a possibly undesired direction in order to continue to preserve
our rights.  In my case, I won the set-aside.  But the court could take up the subsequent petition and grant their request, and then
I'll have to respond by continuing to stand on my rights.  Failing to do so will cause me to loose my footing, so to speak.  Logic
dictates that if the law says it's this-a-way, then it should be cut and dried.  But just about anybody can come forth and say it ain't
so, and then you've got to pipe up and re-claim your ground.  If you ever want to know why the court system is so backed-up, this is a
good place to start looking...

And now for a shameless plug... after all this, it's pretty evident that this saga isn't over. So, I decided to sign up for something
called Pre-Paid Legal.  The attorney I had talked with wanted to charge me 3x what the PPL contract costs just to file my "motion to
set-aside" (four and a half pages of double-spaced gibberish), and the benefits of PPL are really outstanding in many ways.  Consider
what the price of an Intellectual Property atty is these days, and the cost to review basic contracts from/for clients...  PPL makes
these services quite affordable -- even for handling stuff like photo-radar tickets :-)  If you'd like to find out more, go here ->
http://www.prepaidlegal.com/go/davidschwartz

-David