Q: Can I motion up an old traffic ticket and get the penalty reduced
It's an old traffic ticket from 2002 for driving while suspended and no insurance. I never went to court and owe $1100
A:
Hello Asker,
Yes, you can motion the case back into court. It would require a motion to vacate and would be accompanied by a fee of about $35-80 (depending on the judgment in the case and the county). I would however be VERY cautions about doing so. Those offenses are very troubling and the fines are, truth be told, not unusually high. This means you may not break even. Additionally, insurance tickets and DWLS tickets, among all the tickets commonly given, are the most rife with administrative implications. The effects of these tickets are littered all across the vehicle code and administrative code and changing the disposition on them can have drastic unintended consequences for your license. Just to name a few:
-Insurance and DWLS tickets have STRICT limits on numbers of supervisions such as once in 10 or 5 years.
-Insurance conviction = 3-6 month suspension while insurance supervision = SR22 requirement for 36 continuous months or else suspension
-DWLS supervision = often comes with hefty community service (as much as 300 hours) while DLWS conviction = suspension for term of previous suspension for non "miscellaneous" based suspensions.
For this reason, I would highly suggest scheduling a consultation with an attorney who can determine the value of bringing these to court, whether it will hurt more or help more, and determining how to best alter the sentence so that it does not lead to undesirable results.
Hope that helps!
Jason A. Wilkins
Attorney at Law
(630) 445-2293
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