Inquiry: My son has finally received copies of HTA tickets from the court, after several requests. There are tickets from 2003 and 2004 – driving without licence/insurance (total of 4 tickets). He lost his licence due to unpaid fines, which is not the issue. The amounts are quite high and he says he doesn’t want to pay them. Is he able to have these reduced? He was making payments but when he was injured two years ago and not working, he stopped making payments and hasn’t since. What could happen with these unpaid fines?
Response: The time to contest the charges and the size of penalties would have been at Court when the matters were originally being dealt with. DRIVE M/V NO INSURANCE charges have very high fines (currently a total minimum fine of $6250 on a first offence and $12500 on a second offence). It is very important to seek legal advice on these charges as soon as they are issued to understand the pending penalties and what legal avenues are available in reducing the charges and penalties. Most charges can be reduced to lesser offences, have their penalties reduced, or be eliminated outright at Court. However, once an offence has gone to a conviction, unless there has been an error made by the Court upon which an appeal may be made, there is generally little that can be done after the fact.
It sounds like there are two issues that your son needs to deal with currently. The first being the unpaid fines, and the second being his suspension of licence. An application can be made to the Court for an extension of time to pay the fines. This application may be prepared and filed directly by your son, or can be prepared and filed by a company such as ours to best word the application to improve the chances of it being granted. If the Court approves the application, assuming there are no other reasons that your son’s licence is being suspended, he should then be able to apply for a reinstatement of his licence approximately one week later. If you would like to discuss having our company prepare and file this application on behalf of our son, you can contact one of our staff via our toll-free number 1-866-801-8299.
Sincerely,
Greg Currie
Office Manager, London