The story of every man and suspended driver

I always get asked how my clients come to be "my clients" The first thing everyone thinks is DUI or parking tickets, and both are generally wrong. Although a DUI can suspend your license, I don't concentrate on DUI violations because there are a million DUI attorneys out there. almost all of them are just looking for the quick ARD application so I usually don't get into a DUI case unless there was some problem with the license suspension after the fact.

As far as parking tickets....forget parking tickets....there is no way, no how that a parking ticket could ever cause a license suspension. I don't care how old the parking tickets are, and I don't care how much you owe, they didn't suspend your license.

How it usually happens;

A regular guy is driving down the street and get stopped for going a little too fast. The nice police officer says he’s going to cut him a break if he shows up for court and there will be no points. This guy gets home from getting his speeding ticket and puts it in the “important paperwork” drawer so he will not forget to call the court about a hearing. But he forgot....

A few weeks later a notice comes in the mail explaining that he “MUST RESPOND TO THE CITATION” or “FACE A SUSPENSION OF YOUR DRIVING PRIVILEGES” and we know our guy does not want to see his license suspended, so he vows to contact the court first thing Monday morning. But after the very busy weekend, he forgot....again.

Now he goes on with his life. Months pass and his job has him busy working 12 hour days, but it’s ok because he has so many new clients things are going well.

During a drive for work to a customer location he gets stopped because his tail light is out. The officer nicely tells him about this small vehicle flaw, and asks for his license and registration and insurance. After our young friend hands the documents over, the officer runs his record and returns to the car to inform him that he has been driving under suspension! He can’t believe it, there has to be a mistake! “I have my license right there” he explains to the cop, but it gets him nowhere. His vehicle is being towed and he now has a very expensive ticket, and to top it all off...he is missing the meeting he was driving to for work.

After getting back home that night he pulls out the old ticket still sitting in the drawer and contacts the court the next morning. They inform him his license was suspended for failure to respond and he needs to pay his speeding ticket. So he gets a ride from a friend to the court and pays the ticket. They give him the receipt he needs to clear the suspension and he complains to the court that he was never notified of the suspension. The court clerk tells him that PennDOT sent the suspension notice to his home, but he most likely did not receive it because the address on his license was not his current address. So he missed the notice telling him that he was in fact suspended when he was stopped the other day. So he heads over to that court to request a hearing for that ticket so this mess does not happen again! It’s not his fault so he will explain that to the judge and he HAS to let him out of the ticket.

So this unlucky guy go back to work, feeling much better about not having these tickets hanging over his head. He also knows he has to repair some bad feeling his boss has because he missed that important work meeting he was driving to last week. In the next week of working extra hard to impress the boss he is stopped again on his way for that same brake light that he never repaired. The officer goes through the same routine and tells him that his license is suspended and his brake light is out. He protests but the officer does not care. The tickets are piling up and he just can’t figure out what to do next.

So he calls PennDOT to find out why his license is still suspended and how can he get his PA license restored. They tell him he never paid his restoration fee ($25) and his license was never removed from suspended status. He tries to pay his restoration fee but there is no way to do that online, he has to visit a local “Tag Store” or mail the restoration fee to PennDOT. He is also told that once they get his restoration fee his license will be restored so there is no need to send it in to them right now. And our now broke and exhausted friend goes about his life, having paid his restoration fee to PennDOT, changing his address online, and ordering a copy of his driving history, he feels confident he has a handle on this mess.

His company send him out of town for two weeks, and when he returns home he has a notice from the court that he missed his hearing for the driving under suspension ticket, and he was found guilty for this violation in his absence. “perfect” he thought..”I don’t care at this point, I will just pay it and forget about it” then he also remember the new tickets for driving under suspension and brake light out. He decides to just pay them all with the recent bonus for his extra hard work.

Almost exactly one week after he paid the two citations for driving under suspension he gets two notices in the mail from PennDOT. The notices explain that he has been given 1 year of suspension for each violation of driving under suspension (1543A). So now our friend has accumulated 2 years of suspension because of a forgotten ticket and missed hearing. His boss has to let him go because he can’t get to customer locations and his life is thrown into a tail spin.

What lessons can we take from our unfortunate friend;
1) Always respond to traffic tickets ASAP
2) Don’t just pay a ticket - ask a professional
3) Make sure that PennDOT has your most recent address.
4) If a hearing is scheduled you better show up or request a continuance
5) Get professional help