You are not my lawyer, I am not your client, and I’m just looking for anyone with experience in a situation like this or knowlege of NYS traffic laws to weigh in.
My husband is trying to get his FL license and was told there was something outstanding from the state of NY (we both grew up there and moved away about 6 years ago). He called the NY DMV to see what the deal was and it turned out that when we bought our new truck in Dec, we forgot to send back the old plates from our car that we traded in. He was told to destroy them (which he didn’t, by the way- other friends of ours ended up having to hire a lawyer after someone at the DMV told them to destroy their plates, then they demanded them back) and to pay a small fine.
When he called back - same day- to pay the fine, this DMV rep says that he has an outstanding ticket from 1987. 1987!! in the small rinkydink town of Barker, NY for failure to have a valid inspection. Um, yeah. Almost 20 YEARS ago. WTF? First off, he disputes that it happened at all, but if it had he is sure the fine would have been paid at the time. The DMV guy said the town had been “going through an old box of tickets, apparently”.
My question is, must they present him with proof that they issued this ticket? Is there a statute of limitations on something like that or would he really be on the hook for a ticket from almost 20 years ago?
The crazy thing is that this was probably way pre-computerized DMV records, but still- he has registered upteen cars and motorcycles since then and never heard of this, he changed his drivers license over to NC when we lived there, and no one has ever mentioned anything like this before.
He called the town but no lie the courthouse is open like 1 day a week for an hour or something silly. The postman probably comes over on his lunchbreak on Wed to open the courthouse up, then picks up the garbage and delivers the mail. That’s seriously how small this town is.
Thoughts? Ideas? Opinions? He’s going to go in and try to get his license again in 2 days when that fine payment clears (since that’s the only thing the first DMV guy even mentioned) and see what happens at that time or if they mention the ticket.
Statute of limitations has to do with how long after the commission of a crime one can first be charged for it. It doesn’t relate to how long after a penalty is assessed one is still obligated to pay said penalty. If the ticket was indeed issued in 1987, statute of limitations is irrelevant. Tickets don’t expire.
In most jurisdictions, failure to pay the fine for a ticket or appear to contest it results in a default conviction. In that case, you’re on the hook for the fine. However, it sounds like this did not happen. You’d have been notified during subsequent traffic stops or attempts to renew your license (assuming you lived in NY) that there was an oustanding conviction.
If they didn’t enter a default conviction, it’s simply too late for them to take action now. According to NYS Criminal Procedure Law § 30.10, the statute of limitations for a misdemeanor is two years from the date of its commission.
I am not your lawyer and this is not legal advice, etc.
This is exactly what I found out a few years ago (maybe from another Doper in response to a post from me) when the renewal of my Maryland driver’s license was held up because of a speeding ticket I had gotten in Massachusetts ten years earlier. I had ignored it, because, at that time, reciprocity on tickets was limited to adjacent states. The computer age turned all those dead old tickets into cash for the states once they got hooked up. Dayam.
The “good” news was that Massachusetts was very efficient at taking my money: I made a phone call and gave them my credit card, and it was done. The bad news was that, even though I was able to do this from the Maryland MVA office, I had to go back there the next day to get my new license, because the data from MA is downloaded to MD in an overnight batch, not in real time. It was a PITA, because the office is almost an hour from my house.