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Paid $500 late cell phone ticket - will seeing a judge help me get some of it back?

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sanchodz

Junior Member
Location: Orange County, California

Hi guys. I got a ticket for looking at my phone at a red light on Dec. 23 of 2013. I was involved in a freak accident that totaled my car the next week (thankfully I didn't get hurt), so I lost the copy of the ticket which was in the car and essentially forgot about having received that ticket because of the shock of the accident and because I had to deal with all the BS that comes after a big automobile accident. Also, the courtesy notices never came in the mail (I had moved recently but didn't get around to changing the address on my license, but I did tell the officer that I had moved and gave him my new address; anyways, this isn't something I''ll be complaining to the judge about). The deadline for payment was on Feb. 7 2014, but I only got around to paying it yesterday. I was mortified to see that the bail amount had risen to $500, and even more mortified to read online that the amount could jump to $800 very soon as it had already been over a month after the original due date. I tried to schedule an arraignment but the online system did not let me as the case had gone to collections, so I had no choice but to pay. Afterwards the online system finally allowed me to see a judge so I scheduled to see a judicial officer next week to see if I can get the bail amount retroactively reduced, and I plan to explain to him that I was involved in a huge accident and failed to take care of the citation in a timely manner as a result. Do I have any chance of getting a discount/partial refund, or am I SOL?

Summary: Already paid $500 for a cellphone ticket + civil assessment, is it too late to see a judge about it and ask him for some leniency?

Thanks for taking the time to read my post guys.
 
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