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Discendo Vox posted:An administrative proceeding wouldn't afford the same market for traffic defense attorneys. Nah, first offense DUI's should still carry the possibility of jail time and pleading those down to reckless driving is the cash cow anyway. I'm just talking administrative stuff like license /insurance, or petty offenses like "old bottles in the back seat" open container tickets and the like.
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Dec 15, 2019 22:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Nah, first offense DUI's should still carry the possibility of jail time and pleading those down to reckless driving is the cash cow anyway. I promise it's still the traffic bar that is the reason.
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Dec 16, 2019 05:35
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Most traffic offenses should just be administrative fines without the possibility of a criminal record or jailtime. At that point, you could get sufficient due process from an administrative hearing. 99% of traffic offenses have no possibility of jailtime. 99.99% of traffic offenses are resolved without a trial. 99% of traffic offenses qualify for deferral of some type which results in no criminal record. Due Process (the right to a trial) belongs to the citizens, not to the State. You're advocating taking away people's due process rights to make the process "more fair" to the people? There are 40,000 people killed by cars every year - 3 times as many as by guns (non-suicide), and the annual economic impact of car wrecks is One Trillion Dollars. If anything, we should be doing more to make sure that every driver has car insurance, and to police people who drive like assholes. Everybody thinks they're a good driver and that everyone else is poo poo. Discendo Vox posted:I promise it's still the traffic bar that is the reason. Ah yes, the almighty [googles it, can't find it because it doesn't exist] organization of 3 lawyers per county who make $43 an hour doing traffic tickets.
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Dec 16, 2019 16:19
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The traffic bar is where I go to get drunk while I wait for rush hour to be over so I can drive home
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Dec 16, 2019 17:23
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Keep a handle of vodka in your glovebox and every stoplight is a bar.
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Dec 16, 2019 17:28
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Traffic fines, and for that matter all fines, should be means-adjusted and scale to a person's wealth and income, like they do in (iirc) norway or maybe it's denmark, one of those countries. You occasionally see a story where some filthy rich person pays like a $12,000 speeding ticket and it's wonderful. And yes this goes both ways, because people with literally no money are not particularly deterred by the odds of getting a parking ticket they can't and won't pay. Also, the right to due process shouldn't auto-screw people who drove through a town on a cross country trip and got a bullshit speed trap ticket they would have to spend days off work and hundreds in travel expenses to show up to contest, thereby providing income directly to the police that run that speed trap as a for-profit enterprise. Here's an idea, if it'd be too technologically complicated to let people access court via video conference from their phone or PC or whatever: let people go to any court local to them and have court-to-court videoconference networking set up and accessible to the public. You could implement a national standard (lol) and people could appear for non-felony charges remotely. (OK I know that's a fantasy because lol at the idea of that level of intrastate technological cooperation and coordination, but if we lived in a fair and just and reasonable society/country it'd be doable and a lot more fair to people.)
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Dec 16, 2019 19:53
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Leperflesh posted:let people go to any court local to them and have court-to-court videoconference networking set up and accessible to the public. You could implement a national standard (lol) and people could appear for non-felony charges remotely. (OK I know that's a fantasy because lol at the idea of that level of intrastate technological cooperation and coordination, but if we lived in a fair and just and reasonable society/country it'd be doable and a lot more fair to people.) Interstate lol, but as far as the technology is concerned a buddy of mine who had just graduated law school in the early 2000s started out working for the DAs office in Philly and was routinely doing video arraignments at that time.
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Dec 16, 2019 20:08
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blarzgh posted:99% of traffic offenses have no possibility of jailtime. 99.99% of traffic offenses are resolved without a trial. 99% of traffic offenses qualify for deferral of some type which results in no criminal record. Due Process (the right to a trial) belongs to the citizens, not to the State. You're advocating taking away people's due process rights to make the process "more fair" to the people? Realistically the answer is not more courts. Courts don't solve problems. If you want to reduce driving deaths, build light rail. I'm mostly working in traffic court right now and the 1% of cases that do go to trial usually do so because they're trials in absentia where the individual has lost touch with the court / doesn't realize they have a court date. Most of the traffic court crimes, it's absolutely insane that jail time is a theoretically possible penalty. Hell, example. Domestic Violence 3rd degree us a magistrate offense in my state. It means you got caught yelling at your significant other in a threatening way, but nobody was actually significantly hurt.The real answer would be to mandate state funded domestic counseling, followed by expungement on completion of the prpgram. Something like that you could handle in a quick administrative due process hearing, you could allow video remote testimony, etc, because it wouldn't be a criminal penalty carrying potential jailtime. Instead, since there is a jail time penalty, it's a full court proceeding. Everyone has to show up, full rules of evidence, etc. This means 99% of witnesses (victims) don't show up (because they're afraid of sending their SO to jail) and so all the cases get dropped. Net result is a giant waste of everyone's time.
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Dec 16, 2019 20:13
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Leperflesh posted:Traffic fines, and for that matter all fines, should be means-adjusted and scale to a person's wealth and income, like they do in (iirc) norway or maybe it's denmark, one of those countries. You occasionally see a story where some filthy rich person pays like a $12,000 speeding ticket and it's wonderful. Anyway, we requested an electronic copy of a filing, and they sent it on a 3.5" floppy disk. In TYOOL 2012ish, a point when laptops were being made normally without DVD drives.
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Dec 16, 2019 20:29
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Realistically the answer is not more courts. Courts don't solve problems. If you want to reduce driving deaths, build light rail. Wait a minute, your traffic court offenses have an outside possibility of jail? We have a few of those up here in Alaska. What does your Supreme Court say about the right to a jury trial attaching? You mention "full court proceeding" but what does that entail? Ours says that any offense with any specter of jail time gets full due process, including PDs, fill discovery obligations, and juries. Those offenses include, for us, those offenses like $5 shoplifting, no license, or minor consuming where your fifth infraction in a year could lead to 24 hours jail. That had the consequence of the local PDs figuring the local DA would, you know, want that trial time for a murder or rape case. So the PDs started scheduling every one of their infractions for a lengthy discovery fight followed by a jury trial, vowing to take a minimum of three jury days of slogging through inanity if the DA wanted that "failure to carry proof of license" conviction. At some point I saw a stat from someone that 17% of court time was spent on no license tickets alone. It worked too, the conviction rate went to zero, and then charging rate went to zero. In other words the increase in penalties had the opposite result as intended! Fun fact, most people blow off their $5 shoplifting court date, but because those are in big boy court a warrant goes out to arrest for a non-jailable offense rather than just defaulting the $30 fine!
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Dec 16, 2019 20:37
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In my county, the default "no penalty otherwise specified" penalty is 30 days or $500. In my state, shoplifting is enhance able; normally it's 30 days /$500, bit third offense carries a potential maximum of ten years. We have full jury trials in magistrate traffic court, for offenses like "nuisance animal" (dog that barks too much) or open container of alcohol in public. We also have trials in absentia if you don't make your court date, because traffic court can't issue bench warrants. We also require only a college degree to be a magistrate judge (pro publica just did a big article) , no law degree. We also allow the arresting officer to act as prosecutor in magistrate (traffic ) court. The whole system is a goddam shambles. To be fair most everything does get dropped or pled but I have an average of fifteen cases set for trial every week, generally five or so of which have a greater than zero chance of going forward. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Dec 16, 2019 |
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Dec 16, 2019 20:54
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Leperflesh posted:
Those sorts of speed traps shouldn't be able to exist. The local authority should clearly telegraph the speed limit to drivers with enough time for drivers to slow down to the speed limit. Speed traps as a trap aren't a safety feature if they don't slow people down. It's like throwing pedestrians in front of oncoming traffic and calling it traffic calming. That said forcing the authority that put in the shed trap to pay travel and wage costs if it's thrown out might deter them. Then again so would them better advertising their speed limit changes
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Dec 16, 2019 21:00
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If the state wants to accuse a private citizen of violating the law, we should go ahead and make the state responsible for all costs incurred as a result of that decision until the point the person is found actually guilty, anything less is just loving around
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Dec 16, 2019 22:26
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Lobsterpillar posted:Those sorts of speed traps shouldn't be able to exist. The local authority should clearly telegraph the speed limit to drivers with enough time for drivers to slow down to the speed limit. Like a sign or something that says the speed? Leperflesh posted:Also, the right to due process shouldn't auto-screw people who drove through a town on a cross country trip and got a bullshit speed trap ticket they would have to spend days off work and hundreds in travel expenses to show up to contest, thereby providing income directly to the police that run that speed trap as a for-profit enterprise. IDK if it makes you feel better or not, but I can tell you that basically 100% of people who get a ticket were actually doing the wrong thing they were ticketed for. You don't have to request a trial to contest a charge if you don't want to. You can generally call in a deferral, pay online, plea to a judgment or any number of other mechanisms for keeping the ticket off your record and insurance throughout nearly every US jurisdiction. And for the .001% of tickets where the defendant was A) from out of town or out of state and B) actually factually innocent, you can generally hire a local traffic ticket lawyer for less than the cost of driving back there to make it go away. Not perfect, but not bad either. And honestly the jurisdictions large enough to support video arraignments and other technology are great - it will really only be a matter of time before it becomes more widespread, because its expensive to implement (no, you can't just start skyping all your defendants) and because governments move and change at the pace of government. Think about how long we have had searchable pdfs. Well, my State just started using ubiquitous e-filing in civil court like 3 years ago, lol.
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Dec 16, 2019 22:43
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blarzgh posted:IDK if it makes you feel better or not, but I can tell you that basically 100% of people who get a ticket were actually doing the I dunno what to tell you if you just don't believe that speed traps exist, but they do.
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Dec 16, 2019 22:57
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Leperflesh posted:I dunno what to tell you if you just don't believe that speed traps exist, but they do. maybe you and I have a different understanding of the term "speed trap"? In local parlance, it refers to a small town where police sit, hidden or obscured from the road, downstream of a speed limit sign, waiting to ticket anyone who isn't paying attention to the change in speed limit. What do you think it is?
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Dec 16, 2019 23:03
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To me, it's where speed is suddenly and inappropriately dropped by a sign placed in such a manner as to essentially "trap" drivers into breaking the law if they're not already familiar with that sign and its placement. Stuff like suddenly dropping a 55mph road to 35mph with a sign just around a blind corner, and then the cop is there to catch you doing 55 in a 35. And, critically, the speed drop isn't necessary or required for the road layout or conditions. Sure, you want slower speed through town, but you're not giving drivers the chance to see the slower speed and drop from high to low speed in a reasonable space. Otherwise, it's just normal speed enforcement and not a speed "trap." This definition kind of gets it: https://www.motorists.org/issues/speed-traps/definition/ but I can see how it's commonly used just to mean enforcing speed laws, which I am more or less in favor of. e. I dunno about this website in general, but this article covers it way better: https://www.alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org/whats-a-speed-trap/ Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Dec 16, 2019 |
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Dec 16, 2019 23:08
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blarzgh posted:maybe you and I have a different understanding of the term "speed trap"? In local parlance, it refers to a small town where police sit, hidden or obscured from the road, downstream of a speed limit sign, waiting to ticket anyone who isn't paying attention to the change in speed limit. What do you think it is? You build a road such that the natural safe and orderly rate of traffic on that road is X, then you arbitrarily set up one small section of that road with a speed limit < X. People naturally drive on the road at X, you ticket them for breaking the speed limit. In other words, you deliberately create a systemic injustice and exploit it for revenue. Also good lord the idea that the average traffic court offender can just Skype into court from their iPhone. Half my clients have their phones shut off every other month for nonpayment. Folks are broke.
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Dec 16, 2019 23:11
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Leperflesh posted:To me, it's where speed is suddenly and inappropriately dropped by a sign placed in such a manner as to essentially "trap" drivers into breaking the law if they're not already familiar with that sign and its placement. Stuff like suddenly dropping a 55mph road to 35mph with a sign just around a blind corner, and then the cop is there to catch you doing 55 in a 35. And, critically, the speed drop isn't necessary or required for the road layout or conditions. Sure, you want slower speed through town, but you're not giving drivers the chance to see the slower speed and drop from high to low speed in a reasonable space. Well I've never seen one of these in person, but I live in Texas where everything is a straight line and you can see for miles. I know of 3 dozen small towns where the speed drops from 70 to 55 to 35, then climbs back up, but thats primarily because these tiny towns grew out of highway intersections, and the way local enforcement and establishment of speed limits intersect with TXDoT (speed limit 55 in city limits, 35 in "residential", 65-75 on highway which is state trooper and TXDoT jurisdiction.)
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Dec 16, 2019 23:25
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Yeah that's just aggressive enforcement of reasonable speed limits I guess. Speed traps are intentionally set up to generate revenue by tricking drivers into breaking the law, with a "concern about safety" as a transparently thin excuse. That said, even non-speed-trap aggressive enforcement doesn't really work when it's just through-state drivers who will never be back there again. E.g. it has no deterrent value. Doing a better job of warning drivers to slow down and giving them the space to do it has more of a safety impact. If you find that drivers are constantly violating a speed limit in a given location, your first idea should always be "we need to do a better job helping drivers to know to drive slower here" and there's a lot that traffic engineers can tell you about how to do that, including visual cues besides just speed limits. The presence of sidewalks, street lights, width of roads, different types of lane markings, etc. can all help drivers feel like "oh, this is a place we need to be slower in" without just issuing thousands of tickets. For the most part, drivers are idiots; but they also don't particularly want to mow down a pedestrian or go flying off a sharp curve or smash into each other, and you can help them to not do that with sensible traffic engineering.
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Dec 16, 2019 23:37
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:You build a road such that the natural safe and orderly rate of traffic on that road is X, then you arbitrarily set up one small section of that road with a speed limit < X. People naturally drive on the road at X, you ticket them for breaking the speed limit. I don't want to defend speed traps but what you've just described there also fits the description of a reduced speed limit outside a school.
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Dec 17, 2019 07:28
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Lobsterpillar posted:I don't want to defend speed traps but what you've just described there also fits the description of a reduced speed limit outside a school. The difference is that school zone speed limits aren't arbitrary and they are typically signaled by large flashing lights instead of small signs obscured by a bush. The best answer is traffic calming techniques like lane narrowing and chicanes to reduce the natural speed of traffic.
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Dec 17, 2019 22:23
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Lobsterpillar posted:I don't want to defend speed traps but what you've just described there also fits the description of a reduced speed limit outside a school. That's why I included the word "arbitrary ". If there's a good reason for it, like a school zone or a dangerous curve etc, it isn't arbitrary.
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Dec 17, 2019 22:35
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bird with big dick posted:I guess I wait a week or two for them to tell me to gently caress off and then go hire a lawyer and hope they don't push it to a trial. Thanks everyone/anyone that read my 6 pages of jabbering. Update: They told me to gently caress off and I hired a lawyer (well, contacted one that a couple different people recommended, waiting to hear back). They came and looked at the trees and said "yep that sure sucks poo poo we'll check and see if we approved the trees" and then the letter they sent me doesn't even say whether or not they approved the trees, just says I don't have a protected view and literally nothing else. I'm guessing they discovered that they approved the trees but that they aren't even willing to tell me that they did is just ridiculous. They were also supposed to confirm the species and estimated mature height and tell me, and of course did not. One thing that I think someone previously mentioned as a possibility for why they could get away with this, all the mentioning of views was something they put in their docs just in case they designated some houses to be "view houses" and then they never did so none of it matters. One thing that at least somewhat goes against that is that their "Guidelines to External Changes" that mentions view protection in five different places is a modern document that is updated yearly so if none of that poo poo applies they should have removed it from it years ago. This will probably all come down to me getting hosed due to the documents saying "may deny" and "will consider" which is ridiculous but I guess I learned a $20,000 lesson. Question: The law firm had a place on their website where you could specify the lawyer and submit a request to be contacted and I filled that out, should I follow it up with a phone call or just wait and if just wait how long? Week? After the holidays?
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Dec 18, 2019 15:39
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bird with big dick posted:Question: The law firm had a place on their website where you could specify the lawyer and submit a request to be contacted and I filled that out, should I follow it up with a phone call or just wait and if just wait how long? Week? After the holidays? My firm is generally reputable and responsive (like I would say anything different) but we typically return contact requests within 24 hours.
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Dec 18, 2019 15:46
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bird with big dick posted:One thing that at least somewhat goes against that is that their "Guidelines to External Changes" that mentions view protection in five different places is a modern document that is updated yearly so if none of that poo poo applies they should have removed it from it years ago. That’s, uh, not really how that works. Inertia means that applicable or not, unless someone with the power to influence removal makes a scene about it no one is going to touch language.
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Dec 18, 2019 16:02
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Yeah, 24 hours and then call someone else. Or just call someone else now and go with whoever you like more. (Also to be over-technical because it’s an easy mistake to make, you haven’t hired a lawyer just because you’ve contacted one. They have to say yes, and there’s typically a written engagement letter.) It’s possible you’ll get a nuisance value settlement out of the HOA-what it would cost for them to defend the lawsuit. But in general this does sound like a learning lesson.
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Dec 18, 2019 16:03
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Arcturas posted:(Also to be over-technical because it’s an easy mistake to make, you haven’t hired a lawyer just because you’ve contacted one. They have to say yes, and there’s typically a written engagement letter.) Jesus, I know I haven’t hired a lawyer just because I left a message for one, that’s why I said this:(well, contacted one that a couple different people recommended, waiting to hear back)
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Dec 18, 2019 21:33
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Arcturas posted:It’s possible you’ll get a nuisance value settlement out of the HOA-what it would cost for them to defend the lawsuit. But in general this does sound like a learning lesson. Even if I personally get nothing I’ll consider it a win if I’m a thorn in their side enough for them to change the language in their documents so it’s not pretty much blatantly lying to all the current/future owners.
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Dec 18, 2019 21:50
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They won't.
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Dec 18, 2019 21:58
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bird with big dick posted:Jesus, I know I haven’t hired a lawyer just because I left a message for one, that’s why I said this:(well, contacted one that a couple different people recommended, waiting to hear back) There are dumber prospective clients than you. bird with big dick posted:Even if I personally get nothing I’ll consider it a win if I’m a thorn in their side enough for them to change the language in their documents so it’s not pretty much blatantly lying to all the current/future owners. There are smarter prospective clients than you.
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Dec 18, 2019 22:02
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A lot of people itt are kind of unpleasant for some reason
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Dec 18, 2019 22:05
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We are lawyers.
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Dec 18, 2019 22:06
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I mean, I didn’t want to say it...
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Dec 18, 2019 22:06
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can confirm, working for lawyers really sucks and is why i don't do it anymore
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Dec 18, 2019 22:06
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euphronius posted:We are lawyers. I'm just an rear end in a top hat, don't you put that evil on me
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Dec 18, 2019 22:08
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Submarine Sandpaper posted:can confirm, working for lawyers really sucks and is why i don't do it anymore  although i am still practicing law at the moment, i hopefully will be free by this summer.
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Dec 18, 2019 22:09
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bird with big dick posted:Jesus, I know I haven’t hired a lawyer just because I left a message for one, that’s why I said this:(well, contacted one that a couple different people recommended, waiting to hear back) Ok. Next time I'll just call you dumb instead of trying to soften my language. You're dumb. You're going to waste your time and money arguing with the HOA, and absolute best case scenario, you end up pissing them off and you'll constantly have a busy-body driving by your house with a ruler to cite you when your lawn is half an inch too long. They'll never change the documents because it's more satisfying for the board to pay a mediocre lawyer $10k to dismiss your dumb lawsuit rather than pay you $5k to go away.
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Dec 18, 2019 22:54
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I thought it was pretty clear from my very next statement that I knew I hadn’t actually hired a lawyer but you’re the lawyer I guess.
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Dec 18, 2019 23:06
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Wait a minute, are you a lawyer?
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Dec 18, 2019 23:10
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