Suspended license question

[tracy358]

What is the name of your state? Georgia and North Carolina.

My 20 year old son moved from North Carolina to Georgia a few months ago because we'd moved down here and he works for our business. He changed his insurance to GA insurance with a different company. A few weeks later he hadn't received his policy or anything to pay his premium, so he called the insurance company and was told that it was on it's way and he was fine. Two weeks later his car was repossessed by the dealer he'd bought the car from in NC. He called them and they told him that his insurance had lapsed. He went to the insurance company and found that they had keyed in the wrong address and phone number for him. He cleared it up and they reinstated his insurance back-dating it. Instead of just getting his car out of repo, he paid it off and picked the car up and is now waiting to receive his title from NC.

A few nights ago he pulled into a convenience store and a cop pulled up, asked Anthony for his license and ran it. He asked Anthony if he knew his license had been suspended. Anthony said no. He asked him to get out, searched him, cuffed him and searched his car. Anthony's friend, Will, was in the car with him. The cop told Will to take the car. Will informed the cop that his out-of-state license was about to be suspended and a judge had told him not to drive any motorized vehicle. The cop asked for his license, looked at it and gave it back telling Will to drive the car.

While waiting to get my son out of jail I began making phone calls to NC to find out why his license had been suspended, assuming it was the insurance mix-up. The police dept. in NC said that it had been suspended for over a year for not showing up in court for two court dates. I asked what they were for and she said she didn't know. He'd wrecked his car 18 months ago and she thought it might have something to do with that. I told her that he hadn't been given a ticket or a citation for the wreck and he'd been living with us in NC when all of this, supposedly, took place. (The first court date was in April '02, when we all still lived there and the second was in September '02, when he still lived there, but we'd moved, but still had forwarding mail.) She said to call the DMV to see if they knew more. I'm going to call them in a few minutes. They weren't open during the weekend.

I now understand that they weren't obligated to read him his 'rights', but my question is about the license. Anthony has been pulled over several times down here, never given a ticket, mostly because the cops in our local area aren't fond of the 'kids with imports' and Anthony has been modifying his car. They never treat him badly, just mostly making sure everything is legal and he's not one of the trouble-makers, which he isn't. They see that he's in the Army Reserve, nicely dressed, is always polite and hasn't broken any traffic laws and they let him go, but they always run his license and nothing has shown up before. Let's assume that there really was a valid first court date that none of us knew about, would a second court date be scheduled without him knowing about it and would his license be suspended and him not be informed of it ever? It's not like he's been hiding out.

I called his insurance company and they said they knew his license had been suspended when they insured him, but didn't say anything because they assumed he knew about it.

Anthony said that the only ticket he'd been issued in NC was around that time. He said he went to the court to pay it and the clerk said it wasn't in the system. She sent him to the office that would issue arrest warrants to make sure that it hadn't been sent there instead and they didn't have him in the system, either. I'm beginning to think that this might be where the problem is, but once again, if it is, he spent time trying to deal with it and was told that it didn't exist and that sometimes tickets just don't get filed. (I thought this odd.) Once again, would court dates be made and no one notified? Thanks

Tracy

 

[JETX]

"would a second court date be scheduled without him knowing about it and would his license be suspended and him not be informed of it ever?"
*** Yes, very likely.

"he spent time trying to deal with it and was told that it didn't exist and that sometimes tickets just don't get filed."
*** That is drastically different then your statement earlier ("the clerk said it wasn't in the system"). They are NOT the same thing. Simply, he wasn't in the 'system' at that time. That does not mean that he gets to walk away. His obligation to resolve this problem would remain..... until he got a release or dismissal in writing.

 

[tracy358]

"would a second court date be scheduled without him knowing about it and would his license be suspended and him not be informed of it ever?
*** Yes, very likely."

Disregarding what you said below and assuming he had exhibited due diligence to resolve the matter, was told by the clerk that if it wasn't in the system by then, it would'nt ever be, how did they expect him to know about the court dates and suspended license? If he hadn't been stopped the other night, he probably would have found out when he went to get his GA license. Unfortunately, that hadn't happened yet because he was waiting on his birth certificate from Germany to arrive. The Army lost his birth certificate when he enlisted.

"he spent time trying to deal with it and was told that it didn't exist and that sometimes tickets just don't get filed.
*** That is drastically different then your statement earlier ("the clerk said it wasn't in the system"). They are NOT the same thing. Simply, he wasn't in the 'system' at that time. That does not mean that he gets to walk away. His obligation to resolve this problem would remain..... until he got a release or dismissal in writing."

The statements may not be the same thing, but the clerk said all of them. ie, she didn't see it in the system, theorized that it might not have been filed, which she seemed to think happened occassionally, and it now didn't exist because it hadn't been filed. Anthony asked what else he could do to make sure that it wasn't around for him to deal with which prompted her to send him to the other office to make sure that it hadn't been accidently sent and filed to issue a warrant instead.

Since posting this we found out several things. The officer that arrested him said that their information was that this had to do with moving to another state, changing insurance and NC wasn't in the loop as to what happened. I knew this couldn't be true since that just happened and the suspension had been for over a year. He assured us that no warrant had been issued, just the suspension.

Anthony called the DMV and she said that the traffic ticket that wasn't in the system before showed up weeks later and it was a simple matter for Anthony to just pay the ticket and his license could be reissued. My guess is this was a burp in the system. It happens. As long as he doesn't end up having to bear the entire brunt of this burp, life will go on. Since Anthony is a very law-abiding man who, in his young naiveté, followed this to what he considered to be due diligence, I'm hoping that the very strict judicial region we live in doesn't give him the message when he goes to court that good people are treated unfairly when so many people try to skirt out on their responsibilities.