demurringdude
Member
What is the name of your state? California.
I noticed a few threads about demurring in California traffic court. I tried this once. It worked, but barely.
Generally speaking, demurring in traffic court is not a good strategy for lots of reasons.
1. The judge is not guaranteed to be familiar with the rules of real court, and unless you can authoritatively give him every last reason why he has no alternative but to grant your demurrer, he probably won't. If you aren't an attorney, it's not likely you will be able to be this effective. If you can't marshal a good argument on a web forum, you aren't going to be able to do it on your feet in court.
2. A demurrer is only applicable if you are conceding that that facts as alleged, even if true, do not warrant you being there in court. If it's a simple case of clerical error about which part of the code is cited, then that can be amended and given to you (there's a process, sure). So at best it's just a delay. And that's just causing you a headache with multiple appearances.
3. You can't introduce any evidence in a demurrer. So if your defense is "I wasn't doing that" then you won't be able to demur. The only thing you can use is the complaint. This is a very strict requirement. For example, you can't use the envelope that the complaint came in to show that it was mailed late or to the wrong address.
4. Even if you convince the judge that you have a legitimate demurral request, and he knows how to handle it, he isn't going to just grant your demurral and dimiss the ticket. He will schedule a hearing on your demurral, and you will have to come back. You will have to serve your motion on the other party, if you can figure out who that is. This will involve you in a lot of research, clerical work, trips to the court, and trips to the DA. Make one error and it is all for naught.
For these reasons I would say it's a poor strategy. There's a lot of work and the most likely outcome is that it won't succeed and you are then paying the fine you would have paid anyway AND you wasted extra time on top of that.
In my own case, my demurrer was eventually denied after three hearings at successively higher courts, but the traffic court was ordered to dismiss my ticket, for the reasons given in my demurrer (ticket not mailed within 15-day limit). Was it worth it to save $500? Only as an educational project.
I noticed a few threads about demurring in California traffic court. I tried this once. It worked, but barely.
Generally speaking, demurring in traffic court is not a good strategy for lots of reasons.
1. The judge is not guaranteed to be familiar with the rules of real court, and unless you can authoritatively give him every last reason why he has no alternative but to grant your demurrer, he probably won't. If you aren't an attorney, it's not likely you will be able to be this effective. If you can't marshal a good argument on a web forum, you aren't going to be able to do it on your feet in court.
2. A demurrer is only applicable if you are conceding that that facts as alleged, even if true, do not warrant you being there in court. If it's a simple case of clerical error about which part of the code is cited, then that can be amended and given to you (there's a process, sure). So at best it's just a delay. And that's just causing you a headache with multiple appearances.
3. You can't introduce any evidence in a demurrer. So if your defense is "I wasn't doing that" then you won't be able to demur. The only thing you can use is the complaint. This is a very strict requirement. For example, you can't use the envelope that the complaint came in to show that it was mailed late or to the wrong address.
4. Even if you convince the judge that you have a legitimate demurral request, and he knows how to handle it, he isn't going to just grant your demurral and dimiss the ticket. He will schedule a hearing on your demurral, and you will have to come back. You will have to serve your motion on the other party, if you can figure out who that is. This will involve you in a lot of research, clerical work, trips to the court, and trips to the DA. Make one error and it is all for naught.
For these reasons I would say it's a poor strategy. There's a lot of work and the most likely outcome is that it won't succeed and you are then paying the fine you would have paid anyway AND you wasted extra time on top of that.
In my own case, my demurrer was eventually denied after three hearings at successively higher courts, but the traffic court was ordered to dismiss my ticket, for the reasons given in my demurrer (ticket not mailed within 15-day limit). Was it worth it to save $500? Only as an educational project.
