Hi all, I recently had a visit from a traffic officer who said he had a warrent of arrest with my name on it!I never actually saw this doument. As I see it, there are many problems here.....I never recieved a summons for this offence, never signed for one either (he had no proof of this even though he said on the phone before he came to my house, that he would bring this with him!!)......the offence involved my wife's car (speeding, 115,11km as per the photo supplied by the traffic officer, in a 100km zone......the fine was for R150 and the speed quoted on the preamble of the fine was for anything between 115 - 119kph)......that car is registered in the name of a cc, owned by my wife who is a 100% member, but with me as the responsible person.......! After a long discussion, I was given a 'release on warning' document, which I did sign, and told to appear in court at the end of May this year. The contempt of court fine is R300,00. I am now in for R450,00! How can I be liable for this when I never received any summons in the first place? What are my options here, and has anyone been through a similar situation? Looking forward to your comments. Have a great day. Mainstand.
I've never been in your situation before but I was just loking through the e-book and it says: "if you get a notice of the warrant in the mail, contact the Court Clerk named to inform him/her that you are 'unaware of any summons.'" Maybe you can just ask the officer for the contact number of the court clerk and give him/her a call.
Further down: You must now do ALL of the following: 1) Ask for "proof of service" that the SUMMONS was legally served on you. (this is probably the most important for you.) Technically they never served you with a summons if you, nor your wife nor anybody staying at your place didn't sign for it. If you didn't get a summons, then you couldn't have missed a court date and be in the hole R300. 2)Request for a new court date 3) Ask for the warrant to be withdrawn ( I'n guessing you might want to ask them nice on this one and remind them that they don't actually have a sign summons from you.) 4) Write down the name and contact details of the person whom you spoke to 5) write a letter to the person to confirm the conversation 6) Get a photo image of your offence (this is NB, apparently, if you want to win in court.)
I know this is straight out of the book but maybe it will help. I see there isn't a lot of traffic on here.