BATTLING TRAFFIC TICKETS IN COURT BRINGS GOLD-IF NOT GLORY-TO SOME LAWYERS
The Wall Street Journal
Monday, December 18, 1995
By Andrea Gerlin
When a Dallas policeman nabbed him for driving 55 miles an hour in a 30 mph zone, Dan Katave was guilty.
But the 29 year old painter worried that paying his ticket might raise his insurance rates. So he turned to a law firm that specializes in fighting traffic tickets, and for $45, the $240 ticket went away.
Opportunities in corporate law may be dwindling, but representing scofflaws in traffic court has potential. More motorists, worried about rising auto insurance rates, are balking at paying big fines even as many municipalities are try to raise revenues by issuing more tickets. New York City, for instance, put more ticket writing police on the street five years ago, and since then, the percentage of tickets appealed has jumped to 44% from 34%.
"People are getting smart about tickets," says John Gioffredi, whose Dallas firm employs six full-time lawyers and handles 5000 traffic infractions a year.
Corporate attorneys have long ridiculed traffic law as a back alley of the profession, but more lawyers are making it a practice. In Dallas, 25 to 35 lawyers call traffic law their specialty, up from just a couple in the mid-1980's. While the Manhattan Yellow Pages didn't show any traffic attorneys 10 years ago, today there are about a dozen firms specializing in such cases there, and half of them are listed in the Yellow Pages.
The work is "not exactly what you aspire to" concedes Jeffery Levine, a New York lawyer who wanted to be a corporate attorney. " But I didn't have the correct social pedigree, so I did this instead of pumping gas."
Traffic lawyers, who often toll without secretaries or even computers, have to be experts in traffic-law minutiae. The errors or loopholes they find eliminate 15% to 20% of clients' tickets. Another 40% of cases are thrown out when the lawyer shows up at the municipal court and the police officer doesn't.
The work can be lucrative: Billboard advertisements or Yellow Page ads can bring so much business - at $45 to $300 a case - that some attorneys earn well into six figures.
Practitioners insist that defending the ticketed is honorable and important. "Simply because an agent of the government says you've committed an act against society doesn't mean you did until you have an opportunity to confront the evidence," says Mr. Levine. "These are rights that we cherish and we uphold."
In a pamphlet for clients, Mr Gioffredi takes another tack: "There are several procedures available to traffic-ticket convictions, even if the violator is truly guilty of the offense," he writes.
Meanwhile, the auto-insurance industry complains that traffic attorneys are putting back on the streets reckless drivers who haven't paid for violating the law. "The driver thinks he's getting off scot-free, but he's not if he's endangering the lives of other motorists," says Loretta Warders of the Insurance Information Institute in Washington.
Indeed, according to studies by the National Safety Council, excessive speed is a factor in a third of all injury accidents.
Since most traffic infractions are misdemeanors, the work of traffic lawyers goes largely unnoticed. But John R. Farris Jr. of Santa Ana, Calif., won fame in 1992. After reading the fine print of a California statute that required traffic enforcement vehicles to be black and white, Mr Farris proved his client was ticketed by a Laguna Beach officer driving a sky-blue motorcycle. The client's ticket was dismissed, and the department repainted it's fleet. California legislators have since modified state law.
Most days are more like two recent ones in Orange County, when Mr Farris went to traffic court to handle five cases. As is common, municipal judges let him go ahead of defendants that were representing themselves. The police officers involved didn't show up, so each moving violation was dismissed within a minute of the case being called. "It's a good afternoon," Mr. Farris shrugged.
When they do have to go to trial, Mr. Farris and his partner, mark Sutherland, says they're prepared to challenge the fundamental fairness of the laws and introduce highway engineering surveys as evidence. Though they charge an average of $150 a case in a county where fewer than 5% of tickets are contested, they say their business is up 30% to 50% this year.
Delaying cases is also part of the traffic attorney's repertoire, and it's particularly useful when police officers must be cross examined. "Tickets that are a year old can give you an advantage," says Michelle Smith, president of the Municipal Justice Bar Association in Dallas. "A lot of times they don't remember it."
In the case of Mr. Katave, the Dallas painter, the officer did appear. But the city was switching to a computer system, and the court's copy of the complaint wasn't available. That was a denial of his Sixth Amendment right to be informed of the nature and cause of the charges against him, says J. Randell Stevens, an attorney in Mr. Gioffredi's office.
In most states, 90% of those ticketed pay their fines and move on. So many traffic lawyers build business by focusing on people who drive a lot, such as truckers, cab drivers and sales people.
In New York City, Elman and Weiss, a four-lawyer firm, represents 5000 cab drivers and handles 100 cases a day. For Mr. Farris and Mr. Sutherland, nearly 40% of the business comes from a prepaid legal plan for truckers.
Despite the routine nature and the high volume of his work, Mr. Farris says he wouldn't choose another calling. "Nobody gets hurt that much," he says. "If you have a bad day, somebody's out $136."
