Out of town while TWD verdict was mailed

[edwardw818]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? California

Hi:

My car broke down and I borrowed a friend's car for an important event back in August, but it was stick and I haven't driven one in 3 years and was a bit rusty. However, the weird thing about that car was that instead of just simply stepping on the clutch and turning the key to the "start" position if it stalled, I had to reinsert the key to start it, and it even triggered the alarm+immobilizer on one occasion and I had to spend a whole minute and even got out of the car to try to disarm+restart it, so I had to be very vigilant about not letting it stall, and I never did for about 4 days.

However, I was barely waking up one morning and it started to want to stall, but I panicked and floored it, which chirped the tires and launched me forward full tilt until it red-lined (or what felt like redlining since it didn't have a tach), but at no point did this old 80's slowpoke reach the speed the cop accused me of going (and I even did a trial run that evening and that confirmed my theory), but I still got a ticket for speeding.

So I extended it to October, then submitted a trial by written declaration. However, for some reason it took the law until January 4th to give me a guilty verdict, and I only had 20 days from that date (24th) to request a trial de novo... However, the document was postmarked on January 11th, but it didn't arrive in the mail until after I left for a business trip from the 12th to the 27th. I still want to fight it or at least attend traffic school since my daily driver's insurance is high enough as it is. What are my options?

(TL;DR: I accidentally dumped the clutch of a stick shift, cop accused me of speeding, submitted trial by written declaration, was out of town for work during trial de novo submission timeline and was found guilty, I still want to fight it or at least get traffic school to avoid insurance robbing me)

Thank you.

 

[justalayman]

Have you reviewed the application for a trial de novo? If not, you should. It contains this;

The clerk mailed the court's Decision and Notice of Decision (form TR-215) in my trial by written declaration to me on (date):

It does not refer to the date of the decision but the date of mailing.

 

[edwardw818]

Have you reviewed the application for a trial de novo? If not, you should. It contains this;


It does not refer to the date of the decision but the date of mailing.

I see, probably misread it; still battling a bit of travel fatigue...

Well, it's still cutting it kinda close, and to make things more complicated, the date on the reverse is the 10th, but tomorrow (30th) would theoretically be the last day. The business trip was a temp job for another company that just so happened to end on the 27th, but I just so happen to have another job lined up where my first day is also the 30th. Can it be mailed in?

 

[justalayman]

I don't want to mislead you and cause you to miss your opportunity to file for a trial de novo so I won't give any direction as to what you should do now. I simply am not familiar enough with this to give you detailed enough info.

Hopefully another around here can take it further.

 

[Zigner]

(TL;DR: I accidentally dumped the clutch of a stick shift, cop accused me of speeding, submitted trial by written declaration, was out of town for work during trial de novo submission timeline and was found guilty, I still want to fight it or at least get traffic school to avoid insurance robbing me)

What code section were you ACTUALLY cited for? I suspect it wasn't "speeding", rather, it was likely 23109(c) which is (in laymen's terms) "exhibition of speed" or "speed contest".