nin137

Nick's Journal
2009-11-20 01:37:48 (UTC)

Municipal Court and Networking

man what a day. so i finally have my bar card and am in the
throngs of opening up my own practice. i realized that law
school has taught me nothing and i decided to go down to
municipal court just to see how one contests a simple
traffic ticket.

the city attorney had to have been one of the worst
attorneys in the world. first of all, if you're working for
the city prosecuting parking tickets you are bottom of the
barrel. and dear god! every single person that was
defending themselves was guilty as sin. let me give you a
brief overview of one (unbelievable) case.

man is busted for doing 55 in a 40. man's argument is that
there is no posted speed limit from his entrance to that
route to where he got busted. officer's counter argument (a
solid one) is that the speed limit on state routes is 30 if
nothing is posted (or in other words, if you don't see a
sign, assume it's 30). man then argues that it's not a
state route, but a state highway (complete and utter
bullshit argument, it is a state route) because on state
highways the law states that it would be a speed limit of 60
(also correct law).

CITY ATTORNEY DOES NOT CROSS-EXAMINE!!!! so the judge says:
"well i have uncontroverted evidence here that there was no
posted speed limit. it is a state route which means the
speed limit would be 30 mph. however, the ticket was
written as '55 in a 40 mph zone'. as there is no evidence
by the city that this is indeed a 40 mph zone, the ticket is
dismissed."

to be fair, the judge's reasoning was completely sound.
but it was an absolute technicality. and if the city
attorney had only put a bit of effort into it, she could
have easily have destroyed the guy's lame efforts.

amazing. then some guy got out of using his wife's disabled
parking permit. completely illegal what he did, but once
again, becuase the city attorney didn't put up even a hint
of a fight, the guy's flimsy argument (that he was "waiting"
in the car rather than driving it) got the ticket dismissed.
absolutely unbelievable.

the short of this is: if you have a ticket, take the time
to defend it, i saw a 100% success rate on 7 tickets!!!!

and that earlier entry i wrote about how i valiantly went up
against a debt collection agency for the unkown person,
"janet", well "janet" turned out to be "james" (chalk it up
to my deafness). james is a straight asshole. not only
have the collection agencies been calling me non-stop
(still!!!!) but he has now been calling me and asking me
"what the hell i said to them." i told him that i told them
that this was now the phone # of a law office. then he
wanted to know what they wanted (i.e. how much money). at
some point i was just like, "fuck you james" and hung up on
him. kept on calling.

time to switch the fucking #.

but first, it's time to go to my first networking event.
wish me luck...i'm fucking horrible at these things. time
to get shitty with a bunch of lawyers and "baby lawyers" and
hobnob about i don't know what the fuck.

the thing that i dread the most is when i first get there.
breaking into a group. ugh.
again, wish.me.luck.




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