After taking the suggestion of many of you on TWW, I hired a respectable lawyer last November to take care of a traffic citation (speeding in a school zone). I paid him and was told he'd take care of it. He was very nice, but I haven't really heard from him since. I've called a couple of times and have just been told that he postponed/delayed the court date. I don't know what that means.

In the mail the other day I received notice from the DMV that my license will be suspended by 6/21 due to my lack of payment for said citation. I've contacted the same lawyer, sent them the letter, called them twice, and still haven't heard anything and have no idea if I'll be arrested.

What should I do?

6/5/2009 9:31:32 AM

ouch, that sucks. is he local? i'd go pay him a visit in person. bring a scary looking friend if you have one. have him stare at the lawyer from the lobby while chewing on chicken bones or something

[Edited on June 5, 2009 at 9:34 AM. Reason : that ought to scare him straight]

6/5/2009 9:33:27 AM

call the BBB

6/5/2009 9:36:48 AM

if i were you, i'd get a lawyer

/chit chat

(that sucks though)

6/5/2009 9:37:32 AM

Hire a lawyer

6/5/2009 9:37:51 AM

welcome to nineteen seconds ago

6/5/2009 9:39:02 AM

go to their office, youd be surprised how many mistakes are made in the clerks office or at the dmv

why would you get arrested? if your dmv letter says your license is going to be revoked for failure to comply ( not paying court costs) thats all thats going to happen.

if you are called and failed its just a speeding ticket they arent going to issue a warrant. if they really arent letting you know anything go there and say you need to know asap.

6/5/2009 10:02:19 AM

was this him?

http://is.gd/PbJI

6/5/2009 10:12:40 AM

Same thing happened to me. I pay big bucks for a lawyer to deal with a minor speeding ticket, then get a letter saying my license was being revoked.

Lawyer said the court clerk must have "misplaced" my paperwork, but I'm sure me showing up pissed at his office with 3 bigass construction workers didn't hurt.

Big smiles. "Hi, is Mr. Smith in? Oh wait, I see him there in his office. No need to page him, I'll see myself in." Never even stop walking...

[Edited on June 5, 2009 at 10:27 AM. Reason : .]

6/5/2009 10:21:56 AM

so tuff

6/5/2009 10:25:28 AM

You know it. Whether it was the lawyer's fault or not, I really don't care. It was his job to take care of it.

6/5/2009 10:28:27 AM

^5 it's called failure to appear, and yes you can be arrested for it. now for a speeding ticket, no the damn swat team isn't going to descend on this chick's house. but if she has another run-in with the police, the cop is going to see that she missed a court date and a bench warrant was issued.

[Edited on June 5, 2009 at 10:29 AM. Reason : ^]

6/5/2009 10:28:49 AM

yeah that's what happened to me. last year i got pulled for merging over a solid white line and when the cop did the standard license check, it showed an outstanding traffic ticket from SC and he cuffed me. SC didn't want to hold me so he ended up letting me go. Of course, I didn't even have an outstanding traffic ticket in SC in the first place and when I tried to resolve the issue, not a single agency could find a record of an outstanding traffic ticket. pretty annoying

6/5/2009 10:59:01 AM

^menace to society, that's what you are.

6/5/2009 11:00:42 AM

Call the NC Bar Assn:

(919) 677-0561 / 1-800-662-7407

6/5/2009 11:03:11 AM

Had this happen with a lawyer in Clayton - I paid him to take care of a speeding ticket, I went out of the country for 2 weeks, came back, and I never followed up to make sure he did.

Fast forward 4 years, and I got pulled over for speeding in JoCo and got cuffed and taken down for a FTA.

I didn't remember the name of the lawyer, so I ended up having to pay another one to get the shit off my record.

6/5/2009 12:06:24 PM

I had a friend in high school that paid a lawyer to take care of a speeding ticket. He got pulled over about 6 months later and arrested because he had a warrant for failure to appear on said speeding ticket. The lawyer just never even showed up for court.

[Edited on June 5, 2009 at 12:13 PM. Reason : a]

6/5/2009 12:12:48 PM

^ So what did you do? Did you have to hire another lawyer?


[Edited on June 5, 2009 at 12:18 PM. Reason : ]

6/5/2009 12:17:01 PM

All I know is his dad had to come down and bail him out. If I remember correctly, they had to go to court and provide proof that they had hired the lawyer or something. I'm not sure how they handled getting the money back from the first lawyer

6/5/2009 12:27:07 PM

Quote :

"^5 it's called failure to appear, and yes you can be arrested for it. now for a speeding ticket, no the damn swat team isn't going to descend on this chick's house. but if she has another run-in with the police, the cop is going to see that she missed a court date and a bench warrant was issued."

lol thanks but called and failed is the same thing as failure to appear. and no she is not going to be arrested it takes FOREVER for them to issue warrants for called and failed speeding tickets. now a dwlr or no insurance they issue it within a week or so. with most speeding tickets it takes quite a while for them to issue a warrant if they ever do. most people get the dmv letter and lose their license before the warrant is ever issued.

and if you read her post she got the letter from dmv for failure to comply if she typed what it actually said not failure to appear, they dont issue warrants for failure to comply

lol guess not everyone knows i deal with this shit allllllllll day long

6/5/2009 1:15:31 PM

ya know, this makes me wonder if my ticket in SC was ever taken care of about 10 years ago. i haven't been pulled since, so i don't know. i just sent this guy $500 and he said he'd take care of it. never heard another word from anyone

6/5/2009 1:56:47 PM

I've never used a lawyer for a speeding ticket but I did with my DUI. Even though for the first couple months he just continued it and said I didn't have to show up for court, I still did. I wasn't taking any chances.

6/5/2009 2:01:08 PM

plz 2 move to chit-chat!!!

6/5/2009 2:07:35 PM

i had a ticket on november 3rd 2001 and subsequently hired a lawyer. he, too, failed to appear one time and I received a letter for failure to appear. contact the lawyer who said "oops my bad" and then he resolved it quickly after that. they're people too, but, i mean, damn, they get paid well to make sure this sort of shit doesn't happen.

the ticket i received two years ago i just handled myself because i realized i could. saved me 300 dollars and all the frantic curiosity.

6/5/2009 2:09:57 PM

when i've had to use a lawyer i keep in contact and followed up with them, i can't believe all of you just assumed everything was fixed. thats crazy

6/5/2009 3:41:11 PM

Well, in my case I had used that lawyer before successfully. He built up a positive image the first time, so I felt like I could trust him again.



I obviously learned my lesson.

6/5/2009 6:40:57 PM

Well, in my case I assumed it was a pretty simple thing. In fact I could have gone to court myself, but I didn't want to take time off work.

You better believe after our little chat that dude was mailing me with updates and I even got a phone call or two.

6/5/2009 8:49:39 PM

so tuff

6/5/2009 9:19:30 PM

The same thing happened to me with the last lawyer I hired. They said it was an error by the clerk of court, but I really don't think so. When I got the letter saying my license was being revoked I called them I asked what was going on with my case; completely leaving out the letter that I had received. At first she told me that the case was closed, but then she seemed confused and after several minutes she told me she would have to do some research and call me back. They filed whatever they needed to get me a new court date and resolved the issue. I suspect the lawyer really did miss my court date, but in the end it worked out so I dropped the issue.

[Edited on June 5, 2009 at 10:01 PM. Reason : l]

6/5/2009 9:46:01 PM

so go ahead and post the lawyers name

if his office is not returning your calls you might as well name him

i mean the first thing could have just been an oversight by anyone but them avoiding you after it is pretty crappy

6/6/2009 12:25:35 AM

dude wheres your lawyer

6/6/2009 8:06:03 PM

you've got me paranoid now, I had a date for a speeding ticket on thursday and I called the lawyer's paralegal the day before and everything seemed good to go but they don't send out any info on the results for a couple days

6/6/2009 11:52:21 PM

^^^ Yeah seriously. Save the rest of us from also having a shitty experience with this guy

6/8/2009 10:31:08 AM

I may post his/her name later, but I've been told that he/she'll get back to me today with some more information. They really are nice people and it could be an honest mistake by the clerk of courts, so I'm not going to burn them too much. It is kind of crappy that there was no regular communication, and I always had to call them.

They said they've been trying to get me a 'continuance', but that's all the assistant knew or has known for the past 7 months.

The letter doesn't say failure to comply or to appear, it just says failure to pay fine.

6/8/2009 12:48:32 PM

dude wheres your lawyer

6/9/2009 8:44:35 PM

i stayed on top of my ticket from VA because my ex-girlfriend had this same thing happen to her. luckily she worked for the court and had her boss beat some people up

6/10/2009 10:43:33 AM

I was supposed to get a call back last monday, but didnt.

The due date is this Saturday.

6/15/2009 5:01:06 PM

Call them again. Call until you get someone (actually call tomorrow as by 5pm now they have left) or go visit them. If youve paid if you havnt, dont. If you can stop payment (check or cred card) do so.

Call the clerk of court and maybe another lawyer. And definitely go to that hearing and be prepared to pay.

Also, call the NC Bar association as Neil St said.

[Edited on June 15, 2009 at 5:37 PM. Reason : !]

6/15/2009 5:36:53 PM

yeah, try your hardest to get in contact with the DA

call repeatedly
leave messages

he can put a stop to that shit with the quickness

6/15/2009 6:42:25 PM

this actually happens a lot. usually it's a clerical error on the court's part (yay government), but sometimes it's the lawyer/paralegal's fault. that said, i would definitely be demanding some proof of resolution here asap. if your license is revoked, there is a rather large fee to get it reinstated (~75 iirc) and you have to take the signs test and all that bullshit. they also could care less who is as fault... you pay, or you don't get it back.

Quote :

"no she is not going to be arrested it takes FOREVER for them to issue warrants for called and failed speeding tickets. now a dwlr or no insurance they issue it within a week or so. with most speeding tickets it takes quite a while for them to issue a warrant if they ever do. most people get the dmv letter and lose their license before the warrant is ever issued."

wrong. and no, i don't give a fuck that you work for a lawyer. you're wrong. gone are the days of any fta warrants going into file 13 and/or months going by before you hear anything about it. sure, you might get 2-3 weeks before you become a priority, but you can bet your ass the warrant has been issued well before that, no matter the initial offense.

as i would hope you know, cutting down on initial and repeat fta's has been a priority over the past 2-3 years. in addition to issuing a warrant for nearly EVERY fta, one way to increase the closure percentage has been giving the minor cases over to leo's that are hoping to advance into a special unit, move to a higher rank, or whatever. these people will hunt your no registration having fta ass down like dog the damn bounty hunter going after a serial killer.

[Edited on June 15, 2009 at 9:57 PM. Reason : shit is SERIOUS BUISNESS now]

6/15/2009 9:56:31 PM

lol.

6/15/2009 10:09:39 PM

lawyer sent my receipt for court costs to me, I'm gonna make sure I copy that thing in triplicate

6/15/2009 10:13:45 PM

I called them and they just told me they'll have it taken care of by the 21st. I asked if I should keep calling or if they'll call me to let me know what's going on, and she just said 'no it's ok we'll get right on it'.

???
VAGUE!

I haven't contacted anyone else because maybe they do have it taken care of, I just don't know what to do.

6/16/2009 8:37:53 AM

Quote :

"I haven't contacted anyone else because maybe they do have it taken care of"

Despite all their bullshit, you're still willing to take that risk?

Have fun.

6/16/2009 8:43:31 AM

This is from the wake da's office site:

Quote :

"Q: How do I get my case continued? A: You are required to be in court on your court date. If you cannot come to court you must have an attorney come for you, not a friend or relative. You cannot call and ask for a continuance or mail or fax a motion for a continuance. You must come to court and ask for a continuance from the judge. If you cannot do any of the above, you need to file a Motion to Continue in the Clerk of Court’s office within five business days of your court date. If the judge grants you a new court date it will be sent by mail. "

I never got anything in the mail.

I am calling them and the BBB today. I should be told more information.

6/16/2009 8:52:09 AM

just fucking relax. they have gone through this many more times than you have, and they know what they are doing.

6/16/2009 1:16:38 PM

If they know what they are doing, why can't they just tell me in a few sentences? Also, if they know what they have done, why can't they tell me that, too?

[Edited on June 16, 2009 at 1:26 PM. Reason : ]

6/16/2009 1:26:04 PM

they are probably busy. you are not their only client.

6/16/2009 1:48:19 PM

you would fail miserably at any business you'd own.

6/16/2009 1:55:41 PM

really it just sounds like you are "one of those" clients.

6/16/2009 1:58:37 PM