Feifer & Greenberg, LLP

How to Fight a Speeding Ticket in NY

How to Fight a Speeding Ticket in NY

Looking to fight a New York speeding ticket issued in Brooklyn or Queens or Westchester or any of the small towns or villages throughout the state?

You’re in the right place — our NYC traffic violation lawyers have decades of experience in getting tickets reduced or dismissed altogether.

Considering the consequences of speeding in NY, in most cases you probably should be looking to contest your ticket.

First, consider where you received the ticket. Is it a NYC speeding ticket answerable to the Traffic Violations Bureau or a local court speeding ticket outside the city answerable to a village, town or county court?

how to fight a speeding ticket in NY

1. Local (non-NYC) court

If it’s one of the local courts, you’ll probably want to enter a plea of not guilty and then pursue a plea bargain with the prosecutor for that particular court. Given the option to settle/negotiate (plea bargain) before fight (trial), it’s certainly worth pursuing the settlement first.

With our clients, the vast majority of speeding tickets in NY local courts are successfully settled and clients walk away with a fine and either nothing or much less on their license than the original charge would have brought.

2. NYC court

If it’s a speeding ticket in NYC at the TVB, then there is no negotiation option. At the TVB, every speeding ticket that is challenged will proceed to a trial. The outcome will either be all (win, case dismissed, no points, no fine, like it never happened) or nothing (lose, guilty as charged).

In some instances, a judge has the discretion to amend the charge down by a couple of mph if it will result in fewer points, but this is an exception to the all or nothing rule that your lawyer can discuss with you if it is applicable to your particular case.

How we fight speeding tickets in NY

The goal is to find flaws in the officer’s testimony. We want to be able to ask the judge to dismiss the speeding ticket based on an error or omission or contradiction or some problem with the issuing officer’s testimony that can be presented to the judge as a potentially successful motion to dismiss.

Examples

  1. An officer fails to mention the specific date he was trained to use the particular radar or laser used as the basis of the speeding ticket in question.
  2. An officer fails to mention that he excluded opposite direction traffic from the zone monitored by his radar when he set up at the location in question. Failure to exclude such traffic means it’s possible a vehicle moving in the opposite direction was the one tagged by the radar.
  3. An officer testifies that he is on the east side of a southbound highway monitoring traffic. However, when we ask to look at the notes he took at the time of the incident, it shows him in a different position on a diagram he drew.
  4. An officer testifies that he really doesn’t independently remember the incident but that he is relying on the notes he took during the car stop to recall and refresh his recollection. However, counsel notices that he offered some testimony NOT contained in these notes that he admits he’s relying on. The veracity of this “outside his notes” testimony is now in doubt.
  5. We get lucky and the officer’s kid spilled orange juice all over his notes that morning and he now can’t recall what happened. Hey–lucky counts too.

The moral of this story is that, whether you did or did not actually commit the speeding violation, there is hope.

There’s always something you can try to do to minimize or eliminate the damage caused by a NY speeding ticket answerable to any of the courts throughout New York State. Contact one of our speeding ticket lawyers today.

Submitted by Scott Feifer

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FAQ

Your office is in NYC. How do you handle cases statewide?

We have organized a statewide network of attorneys. In our network are both attorneys who work for Feifer & Greenberg and attorneys who work for other firms that regularly provide of-counsel representation to our clients. This statewide network allows us to match clients in a particular county or court with local attorneys who regularly appear on similar matters in the same county or court. It enables us to help clients anywhere in New York State and in our opinion provide particularly effective and affordable representation for our clients. Local attorneys can draw on their particular local experiences and, with travel time and expense removed from the equation, help us keep our legal fees low.

Do you guarantee results?
We can only guarantee that we will provide the best possible client service and legal representation. We can’t guarantee results. These are legal proceedings and we can’t promise you that every case will end in our favor. We will always honestly assess your case (both good and bad) and set realistic expectations during your consultation. We’ll discuss our goals and objectives but no attorney can ever guarantee how a case will conclude.
Should I just pay my ticket or should I fight?

We recommend fighting almost all tickets. Even if the current NY traffic tickets aren’t particularly harmful, you have an incentive to keep your record clean for the future. Convictions quickly lead to surcharges, insurance increases and other complications. You should strongly consider any decision to pay a ticket without fighting.

How can our traffic ticket lawyers help you?

Our lawyers are experienced, prepared attorneys who understand the nuances of fighting traffic tickets. Experience, preparation and good decision making help us to help our clients avoid points, surcharges, insurance increases and the other negatives that can easily result from a traffic ticket.

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