last night i was served with a summons to appear in court for 2 charges.

the problem being that i was never pulled over, ticketed or contacted by police until today and they say the offences took place in November. at this time i was also trying to sell my motorcycle and several people test drove it on the day in question. i am being charged with:

parking a vehicle on a highway, and not wearing a proper helmet

im confused how this can even happen without any contact to verify it was me or to check my helmet. any thoughts?

You're going to have to request disclosure and go from there. The only other option would be to find out who the investigating officer is and contact them directly. If you truly had nothing to do with the offences you may want to go that route. It's possible someone impersonated you if they were riding a bike registered to you.

Stanton wrote:You're going to have to request disclosure and go from there. The only other option would be to find out who the investigating officer is and contact them directly. If you truly had nothing to do with the offences you may want to go that route. It's possible someone impersonated you if they were riding a bike registered to you.

would i request disclosure at court? what would this give me?

i would assume since theres no charge of failing to provide a licence that noone was pulled over for this , since if they gave their licence i wouldnt be the one being charged and if they gave my name they wouldnt have been able to give my licence.

Also...is it their responsibility to prove i was in fact the driver of the motorcycle, or mine to prove i wasn't. (Which im not sure how i could aside from saying it wasnt)

motorider wrote:Also...is it their responsibility to prove i was in fact the driver of the motorcycle, or mine to prove i wasn't. (Which im not sure how i could aside from saying it wasnt)

Request disclosure and review it.

Since you have the summonses you can go ahead and send in a disclosure request now. Disclosure will include the officer's notes regarding the two charges, plus footage from the police car's dash cam if that particular police car was equipped with one. Reviewing that information will give you an idea of what led to these charges, then you can start planing your defence. This link will take you to a thread that explains how to file a disclosure request and includes a sample request form you can use: http://www.ontariohighwaytrafficact.com/topic2959.html

They have up to 6 months from the date of an offence to lay a charge. When did the offence supposedly take place?

When you show up for the date listed on the summons, this is NOT your trial date. They basically want to know how you plan to plead (guilty or not guilty). If can just plead guilty if you want (not adviseable) but if you plead not guilty then they will set an actual trial date for you.

My advice:

- I would suggest that you do NOT "explain what happened" to prosecutor at this first court date.

- Just advise the prosecutor nicely that you would like disclosure before you make any comments on the issue.

- Also ask the prosecutor if you are being charged as the driver or the owner.

- Then you can then say either:

(i) "I will be pleading not guilty at this time and would like a trial date set." --> they will set a trial date for you

(ii) "I would also like to review disclsoure before I plead." --> they will set another court date for you come back and then at this second court date you again can choose to plead guilty or not guilty and then they will set a trial date if you plead not guilty.

The reason you want dislcosure is that this is a copy of the officers notes and any witness statements. This will tell you exactly the situation that occured and how it occured and who was involved. You can not know how to defend the charge properly until you know why they laid the charge in the first place. This is also why it is important not to say anything yet to the prosecutor until you understand how it all came about.