• FreeAdvice has a new Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, effective May 25, 2018.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our Terms of Service and use of cookies.

OR CA license mixup

Accident - Bankruptcy - Criminal Law / DUI - Business - Consumer - Employment - Family - Immigration - Real Estate - Tax - Traffic - Wills   Please click a topic or scroll down for more.

far_to_go

Junior Member
What is the name of your state? Oregon

What is the name of your state? Oregon and California

Hi,

I was working in CA in the computer industry from 96 to 01 and maintaining a presence in OR due to a small business I was involved in. My jobs in CA were full time. I had a valid OR license during this time.

While in CA, I picked up a couple of 5mi over speeding tickets and paid them. When I got the speeding citations, I also got cited for driving without a valid license.

I went to the court clerk, paid my bail, showed my Oregon license and was told that I didn't need to come in for my court date.

Here's where the plot thickens....

I went in to renew my ORDL (living full time back in OR now) and found that CA has a hold on my license. I've contacted the courts and they want $550 x 4 to release the holds. They claim that I had an invalid CA license during the time the tickets were issued so they automatically issued a non-valid license administrative citation when the tickets hit the system (sometime after my visit to the clerk). They all picked up FTAs and the fines increased.

I did some digging and here's the fine print. I moved from OR to CA in 87 and got a CADL. I thought I was going to go to school at Berkley in 88. Long story short, they canceled the degree (at&t unix lawsuit) and I surrendered my CADL in 88 and went to school in Oregon. In 2000, a friend talked me into taking the CA motorcycle test. I failed and thought that was the end of it. Apparently, the DMV clerk activated my license records so that even though I took the test and failed, my CADL was now listed as primary. This fact worked through the computer system and now CA says that I had an invalid license during this time and not a valid ORDL.

I'm thinking that the only thing to do is throw myself on the CA court's mercy and pay the bails for the FTAs that I never knew about. Maybe they will give me back some of the $2,000.

Is there any other process or advocacy that I can pursue this through? It's xmas time and I'm getting married so this is one of the worst times to cough up two grand.

Thanks for your time,

Alan
 


CdwJava

Senior Member
An FTA is not the same as having a valid or invalid license. CA does not have one license superior to another - you either have it or you don't. And the reason you were probably cited for not having a valid license (and without knowing the specific sections you were cited for, this is only supposition) because you worked in CA - and by CA law that generally requires you have a CA license.

If you failed to take care of some citations, then they would suspend your privelege to drive in CA and Oregon would likely honor that suspension being that we are part of the same interstate compact on the issue.

You can hire an attorney to argue the matter for you, but that might cost you about the same as paying the tickets ... and then you would likely still have to pay the tickets off as well as the lawyer. But, you never know.

- Carl
 

far_to_go

Junior Member
CdwJava said:
An FTA is not the same as having a valid or invalid license. CA does not have one license superior to another - you either have it or you don't. And the reason you were probably cited for not having a valid license (and without knowing the specific sections you were cited for, this is only supposition) because you worked in CA - and by CA law that generally requires you have a CA license.
Residency is the fine point of the case. I commercial fished for a number of years to pay for college and got pretty familiar with the residency laws. Being a principal in an Oregon based business outranks being an employee in a California based business for tax purposes and residency. The sticker is that CADMV requires that I carry a CADL even if I am an Oregon resident if I am an employee (not clearly worded) of a California company.

The odd part is that I tend to get about one ticket a year in the 5mi over class of tickets, I never had this happen before I took the CADMV motorcycle test. My hypothesis is that this changed my CA records from Out Of State to In State Expired.

The painful part of this is that the notices to appear were not sent to either my current Oregon (ORDMV records) or California (on citation) addresses but instead to a friend's house in Auburn (last CADMV address) where I had been in 87 getting residency in CA for Berkley.

The DMV works in mysterious ways. Putting this together correctly into a pleading letter to the court could possibly fix this but it's feeling like it's beyond my ability to sum up the history in a short and clear fashion.

Thanks,

Alan
 

Find the Right Lawyer for Your Legal Issue!

Fast, Free, and Confidential
data-ad-format="auto">
Top