Aussie
Speeding Fines
A
legal analysis of Mike Palmer's ebook.
Barrister's legal advice:
"It's
a scam.
Don't waste your money on this useless eBook"
Previous Page 7 Next
What
happens when you rely on the letters?
If you send all of the letters as
suggested by aussiespeedingfines.com, the fine will be processed by the
enforcement system despite your letters. That it their stated policy. I
am informed by senior police at the Traffic Camera Office that the
police have received legal advice from Senior Counsel ( a Q.C.) that
the aussiespeedingfines.com.au letters are of no legal effect and
should be ignored. I agree with that advice.
If you send a valid objection to the fine
and ask for offence to be heard and determined by a court, you will
soon receive a charge and summons in the mail. You now have a court
case and you can run any defence you want. If you rely on the defence
that the police have already entered into an agreement with you to
settle the case, and/or you argue that the court has no jurisdiction to
hear the matter, you will lose. It is a useless argument that has never
and will never succeed because the police have not agreed to any such
thing. In Australia, silence is not consent unless supported by a
legislative provision.
If you do not elect to fight the fine in
court, eventually an enforcement order will be made against you by the
Infringements Court. Let's assume you ignore the enforcement order and
their demand that you pay the additional costs. Two months later a
warrant is issued for recovery of the debt. Eventually the sheriff
knocks on your door carrying a pair of handcuffs, a wheel lock for your
car and a truck to cart away your jet ski, billiard table and pinball
machines. He wants money or your body. You show him the letters you
have sent to the police. You tell the sheriff that the police have not
provided you with the documentation and proofs that you requested
within the 28 days that you allowed them. You explain to the sheriff
that the police have thereby entered into a private settlement of their
claim and have agreed not to prosecute you. You tell him that the
enforcement order is invalid and so too is the warrant that stems from
it, so he is powerless to do anything to enforce it. The sheriff
laughs, waives the warrant in your face, impounds your car, suspends
your drivers licence, seizes your jet ski and trail bike, and insists
that if the money is not paid within 7 days we will come back and
arrest you.
You go to see a lawyer and ask him to take
steps to reverse the injustice you are experiencing. He makes
application to the Infringements court to set aside the enforcement
order that has been made against you on the grounds that the
Infringements Court had no power to make the order, given the existence
of a private settlement agreement which pre-dated the enforcement
order. The registrar of the Infringements Court refuses your
application for revocation as this ground is considered fanciful. You
appeal against the registrar's refusal. The appeal is then listed for
hearing before a Magistrate.
You attend the Magistrates Court on the
appointed day with your lawyer. Your case is called. You have to
convince the Magistrate that the enforcement order should be set-aside
and you should be given a chance to defend the alleged offence. You get
in the witness box and give evidence to the court. You tell the
magistrate that the infringement was settled by a private agreement.
You tender copies of the letters you sent to the police. The police
prosecutor cross examines you. He asks you if you exceeded the speed
limit on Geelong Road on the date in question. You mumble something
about you are not sure. They produce your first and second letters
which you tendered into evidence moments earlier. They point out that
in these letters you state "Please understand that I am more than
willing to accept your claim and pay the associated fine". You agree
that this is the case but your answer to that is the letter has the
words "without prejudice" on it, so it can not be used against you. The
Magistrate falls off his chair laughing. Of course it can be used
against you. You are the one who tendered it into evidence to prove the
alleged private settlement agreement. The police then suggest that you
could have objected to the fine if you wanted to have your case heard
and determined by a court. You agree that this is the case. The
magistrate then has to decide if there is any basis for allowing the
enforcement order to be revoked and allowing you to defend the
allegation of the offence. Given that you do not deny liability for the
offence, and you have no justification for failing to object to the
fine within the time allowed, the court will most likely refuse your
request to set aside the enforcement order. It will refuse the
application partly because you will have failed to show that refusing
to set aside the order would result in an injustice, or that you have a
realistic prospect of winning your case should you be allowed to defend
the allegation, and because you have failed to show any basis as to why
you have failed to bring the matter to court in the usual manner (by
objecting to the fine within the time allowed). So your appeal will be
dismissed. You will then be ordered to pay the amount owing under the
warrant, together with your legal bill (if you have engaged lawyers).
So the end point is you have been refused the opportunity to defend
yourself in court and you have racked up more than double the original
fine amount as a debt to the state, and you still have the demerit
points, and a useless ebook.
Legal theories from AussieSpeedingFines.
Mike Palmer has published many examples of some quite ridiculous legal theories. Here we comment on some of them:
| Mike Palmer's Publication |
My Comment |
In the
meantime, we have had MANY queries from people saying that they have
elected to go to court and they then decided to pay the original fine
at the last minute only to have the agency concerned return the fine
and incorrectly and ILLEGALLY tell them that they couldn’t accept the
payment and they now had to go to court.
|
Those
who elect to go to court will find that the original infringement
notice is withdrawn and replaced with a charge and summons. The only
way to bring a charge and summons to an end is for it to be dealt with
by a Magistrate in court.
Once you elect to go to court you do not have any right to change your
mind. You can always ask the Magistrate to make an order similar
to what was on the infringement notice. |
Now, there are a number of problems with this response by the agencies:
Firstly,
despite their continued persistence that these fines are somehow a
criminal offence, the reality is that they simply are NOT. These are
Civil matters as they are trying to extract payment from your ALL CAPS
name. Any court proceedings dealing with payment of money come under
civil disputes. Speeding fines, red light camera fines etc. all only
proceed to court because you failed to pay the prescribed fee –
rendering them Civil matters. |
Infringement
Notices are not civil matters. They always deal with a criminal
offence. Breaching speeding laws is a criminal offence, not a civil
debt. A fine is the financial penalty which you have the option
to pay if you do not wish to dispute the criminal offence alleged
against you. Once you elect to go to court, the offence is enforced by
a court making an order if a charge is found proved.
There is no such thing as an ALL CAPS
name. Your name is still your name no matter whether it is spelt with
or without capital letters. It is a widespread practice to capitalise a
person's surname on legal documents because in many cases it is impossible to tell which
part of the name is the surname without using capitals to distinguish
between the two.
The infringement notice is not trying to extract payment. It is
inviting you to accept guilt by paying the fine, or else take the
case to court. At court the question is not liability for a civil debt.
The question to be determined is whether you are guilty of a criminal
offence and if so what the appropriate sentence will be.
|
| This, by
the way, is also why the 3 step process IS a legal and valid process
because the steps leading to and including the private settlement
agreement come under Civil law. But you MUST present this information
in the correct way for it to be taken notice of. If you explain the
paragraph above to the Judge they will start to get some understanding
of what you are doing, rather than just “copying and sending letters
off the internet”. |
Infringement
offences have nothing whatsover to do with civil law. Palmer is either
an imbicile or just pulling your leg. It does not matter how you
present the matrial, it will still be ignored by the Police and the
"judge" (perhaps he meant to say "Magistrate"). |
| Now, because
they are Civil matters they have certain obligations under Commercial
Law. The relevant obligation here is that when payment is tendered then
they must accept that payment. If they do NOT accept that payment then
they give up any further entitlement to pursue that debt. We have
written a letter to the Department of Justice on this point and will
include any relevant replies in our next update. |
First, the
option to pay the amount specified on an infringement notice ceases
once the person elects to take the infringement offence to court.
If you elect to take the matter to court, the fact that you offered to
pay the original penalty amount prior to the court case can not prevent
the magistrate giving you a much higher fine and also licence loss if
he or she wishes to do so. |
| For example,
if we were to send you an e-book and say “Just send us a cheque when
you receive it” – (sorry, no, we can’t actually do that, this is just
an example) – and then you sent us a cheque - we can’t then turn around
and send the cheque back and say “No, we only accept cash now.” A legal
form of payment was tendered and if we refuse to accept that payment we
cannot legally lay any claim to it any time in the future. If we were
to then try and sue you for the price of the e-book you would simply
explain that you sent a cheque and that lawful and valid payment was
refused and therefore we have no further entitlement to the debt and a
Judge would side with YOU. |
Infringement
notices are not concerned with form of payment. They are not concerned
about whether a debt is paid or not. They are concerned about
determining guilt for a criminal offence. The only way to determine
guilt is to give the person a chance to accept guilt by paying the
fine, or to determine the question of guilt in court if the person
elects to take the case to court. |
| So, what does
all this mean to you? It means that if you send a cheque to the
relevant agency a week or 2 before the final hearing date and they send
it back then they have given up any right to pursue a debt from you.
Therefore, there is NO need for you to go to court because they are
only going to court to pursue the recovery of a debt. |
The relevant
agency could not possibly accept a cheque a week or two prior to the
final hearing even if it wanted to. Firstly, it would be tantamount to
a bride to the agency to encourage it to withdraw charges that have
been laid. Secondly, as charges have been laid, the only way for those
charges to come to an end is for the court to make an order in respect
of them. The agency needs to allocate any payment to an infringement
notice or a court order. As the infringement notice was cancelled prior
to the court case commencing, it is impossible to allocate the payment
to the infringement notice. |
- Site
Content
-
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The aussiespeedingfines
strategy
- 3. The First Letter
- 4. Analysing the First letter
- 5. The Second Letter
- 6. Analysing the Second letter
- 7.
What happens
when you rely on the letters
- 8. Who operates
aussiespeedingfines.com?
- 9. Aussie Speeding Fine
Exclusion Clauses
- 10. Examples of Mike Palmer's
legal nonsense
- 11. Unlawfully providing legal
advice?
- 12. Terms and conditions of
this website
-
- View
all as a single page
-
|