You’ve heard of the double down, but what about the duodecuple down?
My University issued me a BS parking ticket a couple of weeks before graduation. I appealed, appeal was denied with no explanation. Fine was $20, no interest, no penalties. I ignored it. They refused to release my transcripts - oh well, that was 35 years ago now, haven’t needed the transcripts yet. They did send letters to me for 10 years asking me to pay the $20 fine, I believe the postage alone amounted to over $20 by the time they gave up.
At my college, if there were any unpaid fines/fees, they held your diploma rather than just the transcripts.
Although as often as I’ve had to show my diploma, I’d guess withholding that would probably be about as effective as the transcripts, lol.
In July 2016, Prescott was caught driving 64km/h in a 50km/h zone and was sent a ticket for it. However, he tried to claim he wasn’t driving the car, nor did he own it.
Sovcit for sure. They have those in Oz?
Yes, although this is NZ. But yeah, having it get out of control like that does definitely sound like sovereign citizenship shit.
Ah legal systems designed to make people not seek to engage with it to solve issues. Let’s paywall off the courts some more so that only big business can afford to use it.
When he didn’t pay the fine and the matter went to court, Prescott didn’t show up and he was fined a further $80 and $30 in court costs.
Two years later, Prescott unsuccessfully appealed the fine in the District Court and rather than seek leave to appeal he sought a judicial review of that decision.
That request for review was struck out and Prescott was ordered to pay nearly $7000 in court costs.
He is summoned and failed to turn up. Then he appealed and failed. Then he keep doing the exact same thing over and over again while trying to strike off the fee. You can’t just waste everyone time and expect you won’t get billed each time you lose. It’s paywalling stupidity/insanity.
So cancel the case and move on, don’t fine the guy ridiculous amounts. The fines do nothing except make the legal system harder to access.
Court costs are different than a fine.
If a random guy sued you for a nonsense reason and you had to show up to court and pay a lawyer hundreds of dollars just to basically say “this lawsuit is frivolous and the ruling is self evident”, it’s reasonable to expect that ransom guy to pay your court costs. The alternative is being sued itself would be like a fine. If some dude with a vendetta sued me 10 times over that I’d be ruined no matter the result.
So frivolous, ungrounded lawsuits have a cost to them that actually has nothing to do with the courts getting money, it has to do with making it right that someone has wasted your own time and money.
This guy did that, and has to pay for not only his own lawyer (if he brought one, I expect he didn’t) but also the lawyer for the city/police department.
Some areas do have an actual fine for wasting the court’s time, so the lawyer thing might not be the only thing going on here, but no matter what, the guy gets to pay more for losing at court when the matter is considered obvious to everyone else and it seems he only wants to argue to avoid a perfectly legal fine.
… is Aukland sort of like, eh, Florida, except for NZ?
Not really, but it is our biggest city by a very wide margin, so you’ll see it mentioned a lot in stories about NZ.
