Hi, I have a court date Oct. 21,08 for parking in the fire route of my friends building. How can i get this $100 fine reduced or eliminated? only argument i really have is that visitor parking was full and i went around a few times. I wasn't there for long either.

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I just got a ticket for going right on red fail to stop(114[18])$180. No pedestrians were in the way. I'm not a unsafe driver, so I'm pretty sure it would have had to of been yellow for me not to stop but I would still have slowed down. With obviously no cars coming.

Sort of new to all this, what is disclosure as well? read a few cases had that mentioned.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks

kreso wrote:

for parking in the fire route of my friends building. How can i get this $100 fine reduced or eliminated?

A Fine is a lot better than this...

Disclosure is when you request to see all the evidence against you so that you can prepare your defence. You can check out my site for an introduction and instructions to fight your ticket including a disclosure request form (see Step 4 on my site).

Speak to the prosecutor before court about getting the fine reduced. If he doesn't bite, then request an adjournment so that you can get disclosure. Same thing for your red light ticket.

And please don't use the excuses you have. They basically admit guilt. You will end up convicting yourself.

so what excuses should i use"

It's not about the excuses. It's about developing a strategy to fight the ticket: disclosure, stays, preventing foundation, maintaining reasonable doubt.

All of this can be undone on the witness stand: "I was parked in the fire route because [insert excuse]..." You've just admitted guilt. Game over.

so i should say it wasn't my car?

If you are looking for some magical do it all excuse that will get you off this ticket, there isn't one. You have to be far more sophisticated than that. You have to attack the officer's recall of the facts: what was the weather like, what color is the car, how many doors does it have? This is to establish that his memory is faulty. You have to create doubt. Ask him what does the sign say exactly?

Request disclosure and hope that you don't get a copy of the by-law that established the fire route on this property. Just because there's a sign, doesn't mean it's legal. There has to be a by-law creating a fire route. If they don't establish this, then they don't have a foundation to lay the charge.

You've got to think outside the box on this one, because on the face of it, you're guilty. You have to shift the arguments onto your terms not theirs.

Their argument: there's a sign, he was parked there, he's guilty.

Your argument: there's no by-law, he can't remember any details, I doubt he wrote the license plate correctly.

[on this last point, this is why I recommend on my site to never take a parking ticket in, always wait till you get a notice of impending conviction, then you can create doubt that the ticket was placed on your vehicle, it just happened to have your license plate written down.]

Also find out who wrote the ticket. Was it a cop, was it a by-law enforcement officer, or was it a private company that monitors parking on private property? The latter is unlikely to show up in court.

I did a little more research into this. The fire route is covered under Section 7 of the Fire Protection and Prevention Act. The by-law is enacted under Part XIV of the Municipal Act.

I want to keep this as a handy reference for others who may want to know the charging acts.