Red Light Camera Citation-Civil collection case

[saketg]

I have red light camera citation in San Mateo, California,
Let me tell the history of my case little bit in detail,

in Feb 2010, i took the right turn on red arrow and camera had taken some pictures. but i never received the citation, but recently two weeks ago i got letter from civil collection(revenue service) to pay the traffic ticket fine including extra fine of 'Not appear in court'. i started inquiring about the fine then came to know about this ticket. i talked to police dept and they told that since DMV did not had your unit number in previous address and citation never delivered to you, since i moved to new address about 5 months back so now DMV has new complete address, since i never got the citation so i did not appear in court, i have talked to court, civil collection, but no body is ready to waive the fine of 'Not appear in court' , i want to file the MOTION to reopen the case in court/judge. Please can someone help me to how myself can file the motion, if any sample format of CA, would be great appreciate.

Thanks

 

[I_Got_Banned]

I have red light camera citation in San Mateo, California,
Let me tell the history of my case little bit in detail,

in Feb 2010, i took the right turn on red arrow and camera had taken some pictures. but i never received the citation, but recently two weeks ago i got letter from civil collection(revenue service) to pay the traffic ticket fine including extra fine of 'Not appear in court'. i started inquiring about the fine then came to know about this ticket. i talked to police dept and they told that since DMV did not had your unit number in previous address and citation never delivered to you, since i moved to new address about 5 months back so now DMV has new complete address, since i never got the citation so i did not appear in court, i have talked to court, civil collection, but no body is ready to waive the fine of 'Not appear in court' , i want to file the MOTION to reopen the case in court/judge. Please can someone help me to how myself can file the motion, if any sample format of CA, would be great appreciate.

Thanks

Why would they waive any of the fine when in fact, it is YOUR responsibility to make sure that any address changes are reported to the DMV within the legally prescribed 10 day period?

 

[demurringdude]

You do not need to file any motion to "reopen" the case. It remains open until you respond to it. It only gets closed by being dismissed or by a verdict being entered. A verdict cannot be entered without you being there. So it's open.

Simply go to the courthouse and ask to be arraigned. Then you can plead guilty or not guilty (some other pleas are possible, but lets keep it simple).

If you decide to plead guilty, you will pay the fine (around $550 I think), however you can ask the judge to order the removal of the "Failure To Appear" amount. This is because you did not fail to appear (you did not promise to appear in the first place).

If you want to plead "not guilty", please post further details so that people here can give advice.

To be clear, you will not be able to do anything over the phone, you will have to go in front of a judge.