In July 2016, Prescott was caught driving 64km/h in a 50km/h zone and was sent a ticket for it. However, he tried to claim he wasn’t driving the car, nor did he own it.
Sovcit for sure. They have those in Oz?
Yes, although this is NZ. But yeah, having it get out of control like that does definitely sound like sovereign citizenship shit.
I got confused for a moment, the Z in NZ made me think of the Z in Oz. I know better.
Sovcits are pretty much everywhere.
You’ve heard of the double down, but what about the duodecuple down?
My University issued me a BS parking ticket a couple of weeks before graduation. I appealed, appeal was denied with no explanation. Fine was $20, no interest, no penalties. I ignored it. They refused to release my transcripts - oh well, that was 35 years ago now, haven’t needed the transcripts yet. They did send letters to me for 10 years asking me to pay the $20 fine, I believe the postage alone amounted to over $20 by the time they gave up.
At my college, if there were any unpaid fines/fees, they held your diploma rather than just the transcripts.
Although as often as I’ve had to show my diploma, I’d guess withholding that would probably be about as effective as the transcripts, lol.
At this point, you should respond and ask for sworn testimony from the person who wrote the ticket.
What does “bankrupt” mean here? The only kind of bankruptcy I’m aware of is where the individual declares it, and it basically means the creditors are compelled to accept the court’s resolution of the debt.
I’ve never heard of the idea of the government making such a declaration. What are the consequences of such a declaration?
… is Aukland sort of like, eh, Florida, except for NZ?
Not really, but it is our biggest city by a very wide margin, so you’ll see it mentioned a lot in stories about NZ.
so you don’t have Auckland Man tossing
aligatorscrocodiles into fast food joints?disappointing!
I don’t think NZ has crocs, best you could do is probably a sheep.
I’m sure you could find a Cassowary around to get some equivalent amount of chaos to a croc.
Ah legal systems designed to make people not seek to engage with it to solve issues. Let’s paywall off the courts some more so that only big business can afford to use it.
When he didn’t pay the fine and the matter went to court, Prescott didn’t show up and he was fined a further $80 and $30 in court costs.
Two years later, Prescott unsuccessfully appealed the fine in the District Court and rather than seek leave to appeal he sought a judicial review of that decision.
That request for review was struck out and Prescott was ordered to pay nearly $7000 in court costs.
He is summoned and failed to turn up. Then he appealed and failed. Then he keep doing the exact same thing over and over again while trying to strike off the fee. You can’t just waste everyone time and expect you won’t get billed each time you lose. It’s paywalling stupidity/insanity.
So cancel the case and move on, don’t fine the guy ridiculous amounts. The fines do nothing except make the legal system harder to access.
Court costs are different than a fine.
If a random guy sued you for a nonsense reason and you had to show up to court and pay a lawyer hundreds of dollars just to basically say “this lawsuit is frivolous and the ruling is self evident”, it’s reasonable to expect that ransom guy to pay your court costs. The alternative is being sued itself would be like a fine. If some dude with a vendetta sued me 10 times over that I’d be ruined no matter the result.
So frivolous, ungrounded lawsuits have a cost to them that actually has nothing to do with the courts getting money, it has to do with making it right that someone has wasted your own time and money.
This guy did that, and has to pay for not only his own lawyer (if he brought one, I expect he didn’t) but also the lawyer for the city/police department.
Some areas do have an actual fine for wasting the court’s time, so the lawyer thing might not be the only thing going on here, but no matter what, the guy gets to pay more for losing at court when the matter is considered obvious to everyone else and it seems he only wants to argue to avoid a perfectly legal fine.
Charging him $110 for not showing up to his hearing seems fair. Charging him thousands for losing his appeals does not.
Lawyers and court time are expensive, and wasting time on frivolous BS should come with a penalty. The alternative isn’t fair to taxpayers.
They’re not expensive ant time wasting to this guy, he just refuses to show up.
I suppose, eventually, he will be inconvenienced with an arrest and incarceration.
Extreme costs make it too risky to appeal against injustice.
That isn’t appeal, that is judicial review, basically wanting the court to review the decision and overturn it. It’s an extra step that shouldn’t be taken willy-nilly, and should be done when you’re sure you have a chance. He already went past the normal procedure and continue to pursuit something as stupid and obvious as speeding fine. The high cost imposed is to stop these sort of frivolous demand, and the court smell his bullshit from the get go as he pretend he didn’t drive or own the car.
I wouldn’t consider these costs extreme, they wouldn’t even be the full cost of defending against his ridiculous claims.
They’re extreme relative to the average person’s disposable income.
He chose to keep wasting money
We lived in a city that levied $500 per day fines for some fairly common stuff (like 30% of the homes in the city had the violations, but only a few were charged with them because, reasons…) so, some homeowners who ignored the fines accumulated city liens in excess of the value of their homes. When that went to court, the judges just threw out all the fines as unconscionable, particularly when you could point to hundreds of homes with similar conditions for years and years which were not being fined.
There is a series of appeals you can make when you don’t agree with something, which is the course this person has followed, and are there for good reason.
The only reason he’s in this situation is his own stupidity and stubbornness.
In July 2016, Prescott was caught driving 64km/h in a 50km/h zone and was sent a ticket for it. However, he tried to claim he wasn’t driving the car, nor did he own it.
Nah, the guy was just wrong.
