Can anybody provide a consolidated list of fatal errors, and whether they are fatal all of the time (at a trial, during a default procedure, etc.) or just when it involves a s. 9 or s. 9.1 examination of the certificate of offence by the JP?

I know the London v. Young (2008) case, but it seems to me that focused mostly on errors in *set fine*. Set fine is explicitly mentioned in the POA in sbs. 3(2)(a). How about the Total Payable?

I ask b/c I was pulled over and given two tickets, one for "Fail to have Insurance Card" ... yes, normally they'll give you 48 hrs to go to police HQ and prove you have current valid insurance, but the guy I had was a stickler. Anyways, he wrote me up for the insurance offence, which has a set fine of $50. The total payable amount was written as $60, but I think this should be $65 ($50 + $5 for the service of the offence notice + $10 victim fine surcharge).

Surely the $5 service cost has to be applied PER ticket, right? It's not $5 for however many tickets they give you, and they just have to include the $5 cost on one of the tickets (it was correctly included on my other ticket), right??? I can't see how it could be that.

Ok, so say the total payable is wrong ... is that a fatal error if I let it go to a s. 9 fail-to-respond JP-in-office examination?

Also, how soon, usually, do tickets go on the fail-to-respond docket after the 15 days have elapsed? I'm quite sure they give everyone a certain amount of grace, before moving it over to fail-to-respond. And how soon after any decision would you find out about it? The POA states that you have to file a s. 135 appeal within 15 days from the *decision date* appealed from. If they mail out a conviction notice, it could be a week or more after the actual decision date, etc. Should I be calling the office clerk every so often just to check up on how that particular ticket is doing?

Also, for such an appeal, there should be zero to few requirements, such as securing three official transcripts, etc., b/c it was just the JP and the ticket. Am I right in that?

Also, I see from reg. 200, s.11 (R.R.O. 1990, reg. 200) that the officer has only 7 days to file the certificate of offence.

<i>11. (1) The clerk of the court shall not accept for filing a certificate of offence more than seven days after the day on which the offence notice or summons was served unless the time is extended by the court. </i>

It is a little confusing though, with the "seven days after" bit. Say a cop pulls someone over today (Feb 10, 2010), when would they have to file the ticket by? When would it be refused? How can you ascertain when a ticket was filed, and which day (I'm guessing the 8th day after) would be the best to check to see (i.e. by asking for a copy of the filed Cert of Offence)?

If anyone can help me with those questions, I'd appreciate it. If you can provide any caselaw involving tickets thrown out b/c of the Total Payable, even better.

when the PON's are turned in they are "stamped" with the received date.

I would say it would be the 18FEB to be the last day to be submitted, based on what you quoted above (seven days after the day). It would be refused on the 19FEB.

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Above is merely a suggestion/thought and in no way constitutes legal advice or views of my employer. www.OHTA.ca

We have one here: http://www.ontariohighwaytrafficact.com/topic1615.html. I will also make a [nicer] list compiled from those and sticky it in the "Courts and Procedure" subforum.



Correct, total payable is a fatal error. One of our members, Off_Camber, won a case in Appeal court due to that. The idea is, that since you were charged a wrong amount, you end up paying less than you were supposed to, and that shortage can lead to "unpaid fine" thus invalidating your license. Here is a link to that: http://www.ontariohighwaytrafficact.com/topic1730.html

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Any idea why a filing date would be past the 7 days (I.e. shouldn't the court refuse to accept the PON for filing)? According to:

http://www.canlii.org/en/on/laws/regu/r ... g-200.html




Sounds to me like it is the clerk's duty to refuse to accept such a late filing. But perhaps there is human error (they probably assume the officer is submitting on time, and they just blindly stamp the back of each PON without checking the date). Or perhaps both parties just hope that people will pay the ticket regardless.

Not sure but I'm interested to hear what comes of this.

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Former Police Officer, Law Student, and aspiring Criminal Lawyer
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For anyone new to this thread, this is how it played out.