Posts Tagged ‘legal’
I’m always amazed at the amount of poorly qualified or outright incorrect information on the web when I search for traffic enforcement related information. One popular topic that seems especially mistreated is disclosure of the Crown’s evidence prior to trial. The authors of the articles would have you believe that you should ask for everything, including the brand of ink in the officer’s pen, and when any of it is refused the ticket will automatically be dismissed.
If you are considering a ticket dispute, you may choose to write to the officer who issued the ticket and request disclosure. Do this at the same time that you enter your dispute so that there is plenty of time for the officer to comply. This way if you have any questions after receiving disclosure you will have time to ask for clarification before the trial date.
If you simply request disclosure, you will receive a synopsis of the evidence that the officer will be presenting during the trial. You may request specific disclosure for information about the officer’s qualifications, what kind of speed measuring instrument was used or for a copy of any evidence that will be presented, such as photos, videos or witness statements. The court will support all reasonably justified requests.
Photocopies of copyrighted material such as the radar operation manual will be refused, although you could expect to attend to the detachment and view a copy to make notes from. Copies of all tickets the officer issued that day and the outcome of any trials related to them, servicing records for the police vehicle, reports of all disciplinary actions against the officer or other such requests will not be upheld by the court.
Would you like reliable advice on the preparation of your dispute? Consider the Lawyer Referral Service operated by the Canadian Bar Association. The $25.00 fee may save you frustration and allow you to concentrate on what is pertinent to your defence.
Reference Link
In this weekly segment, we cover the top discussions going on in the auto forums. These threads may be the most recent hot topics, or epic threads that we just wanted to dig up and feature.
If you have a suggestion for a thread to be included on the forum weekly review, e-mail it to info@beyond.ca. If you have not joined our forums, register today its free!
You paid what?! for your vanity plates?
While most of us roll around in our cars with regular license plates, some choose to purchase vanity plates for a variety of reasons. HER DB9 for the lady in her Aston Martin, THX MOM for the new college grad in her (paid off) BMW. Vanity plates aren’t too expensive here so you do see them quite often, but over in the land of excess vanity plates are a bit different. Check out the thread to how much you need to pay for a license plate that says “1″ on it. Insane!
Thanks for the reminder re: School Zones
A forum member thanked us for posting a reminder that the new school year has started and as a result the hundreds of school zones across the province (and country really) are now back in effect. The thread quickly turned into a debate on whether or not playground zones and school zones are effective. What people on both sides of the argument forgot is that reduced speed zones and proper parenting are not mutually exclusive. Why can’t we have both?
MP Introduces Private Member Bill to Limit Vehicles to 150 km/hr (93 mph)
Bill C-568 is aimed squarely at car enthusiasts. The bill if passed will make it illegal to operate, import, sell, lease, or purchase a vehicle if it is not equipped with a speed limiter set to 150 km/h. It would also be illegal to remove or disabled the limiter. Emergency vehicles however would be exempt from this new law. It obviously will not make it past the first reading (if it even gets there) as it currently does not have much support (gee I wonder why?).
In this weekly segment, we cover the top discussions going on in the car forums. These threads may be the most recent hot topics, or epic threads that we just wanted to dig up and feature.
If you have a suggestion for a thread to be included on the forum weekly review, e-mail it to info@beyond.ca. If you have not joined our forums, register today its free!
The Gallery Of Fine Cars Threatens To Sue Beyond.ca
Of course this thread was going to be a part of this weeks forum thread round-up! If you missed this discussion this week, basically our members (thats you!) shared some experiences with a local used car dealership on our forums. Said dealership did not like all the “biased” comments that were untrue and wanted us to delete the posts. Unfortunately for The Gallery of Fine Cars, we don’t remove comments without a court order, especially not when we are threatened with a lawsuit in an e-mail riddled with spelling mistakes.
Beyond Member Helps Recover Another Stolen Car, RHD CRX
While we like to poke fun of RHD car owners occasionally all the time, we reunite when one of our members loses their ride to some scumbag car thief. After spotting several times, Kona9 was able to assist the Calgary Police in locating and returning the car back to its rightful owner. Unfortunately, the suspect ditched the vehicle after a short pursuit with Police, and got away.
2008 Bull Run Cars Visit One Of Our Sponsors
A few of the cars participating in the 2008 Bull Run dropped by Tunerworks, one of our sponsors for a quick tune-up and wheels before the long drive that starts this morning. For more pictures of the other Bull Run cars, visit our forums. If you are not yet a member, join today because its free!
They say theres no such thing as bad press, but it has come to our attention that a certain used car dealership in Calgary is tired of dealing with negative publicity. On our forums, our members engage in discussions across a variety of subjects usually centered around the automotive world. One such discussion was one of our member’s experience while shopping for a car at The Gallery of Fine Cars.
In the discussion, several members shared their experiences with others about the dealership much like how other members write restaurant reviews, share health and fitness tips or even help each other fix our cars. Unfortunately for The Gallery of Fine Cars, there were more people posting bad reviews than those posting positive reviews.
The Gallery of Fine Cars did not like that people were sharing their negative experiences with each other and wants Beyond.ca to delete all references to their dealership by June 23, 2008. It really only takes a day to delete a post so I’m not sure why we were given so much time to do it anyway but I digress. The fact is, Beyond.ca is a public discussion forum. We are not in the business of censorship, and will not be removing any messages unless they violates our terms of use or forum rules.
We do, and have in the past however removed posts under court order. These court orders are the results of legal action taken against individual members of the forum as they are written by individual members. Here’s a copy of the e-mail that we received from The Gallery of Fine Cars
From: Justin Klee
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2008 5:27 PM
Subject: The Gallery of fine cars/legal action against beyond.ca
To whom this may concern,
Over the past 2 or so years we have received some very negitive publicity from your website www.beyond.ca. We neither have the time or patience anymore to respond to these very untrue, biased blogs on your website and will be filing a class action suit against www.beyond.ca and any of its owners if The Gallery of fine cars is further mentioned hereforth in its website. We would also like any prior posts, blogs or mentions deleted from your system asap. We have set an appropriate deadline of June 23/2008 for someone to either respond or the above actions to be resolved otherwise we will be dealing with this in a legal manner. Thank you.
Justin Klee/Adriano Aprile
Owners
The Gallery of Fine Cars Inc.
1305 33rd Street NE
Calgary, AB T2E 6S8
In the past we kept our legal adventures behind the scenes but we have decided that if people are going to waste our time then we might as well justify spending the money on lawyers by posting them publically for all of our members to read. We hope this will discourage similar e-mails from showing up in our inbox.
PS: Justin/Adriano, you may want to look up what a class action lawsuit is before threatening Beyond.ca with one.
Ontario has joined British Columbia and Nova Scotia in banning smoking in vehicles carrying kids under the age of 16. The offense carries a maximum fine of $250. Critics of the ban argue that this is just another step towards banning smoking in private residences but the Government claims it has no plans under consideration. While Ontario has introduced controversial laws in the past, most are supportive of this one as it is hard to argue against it.
Smoking in Ontario workplaces and public areas, such as bars and restaurants, is already illegal in Ontario, but the new ban will provide an additional level of protection to children under the age of 16 , said Health Promotion Minister Margarett Best.
Other provinces that are also considering similar bans are Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. Alberta, which banned smoking in all public areas is not considering extending the ban to vehicles with children.
I find it a shame that we need legislation to control every aspect of our lives and that common sense cannot dictate what we do. Seriously, do we need a law that says when we are driving young kids around that we should not smoke and force them to breathe in all that smoke? Lets ignore the health hazards for a moment. Do we want our kids to smell like cigarette smoke? When I see news articles like the one below I get reminded that, yes we do need these laws.
This story is sure to please those of you who have recieved a parking ticket before. Eric Bryant, who happens to be a lawyer, was dining at a Japanese restaurant when he witnessed an on duty officer park illegally in front of the restaurant.
The officer acknowledged to Bryant that he was parked illegally, but did not move his vehicle until his take out order was ready. His excuse? He, along with all other officers, were told to always remain close to their vehicles in case they had to respond to an emergency. Bryant decided to pursue the case further by issuing the officer a series of citizen-initiated parking violations.
“If he had acknowledged and corrected his error, we could have avoided this whole thing,” says Bryant. “But instead, he kept watching basketball and told me he wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
Now, using ORS 153.058, Bryant—as a private citizen—has initiated violation proceedings against Officer Stensgaard. Bryant alleges Stensgaard was in violation of state statutes on illegal parking, illegal stopping, obeying parking restrictions on state highways, and illegal operation of an emergency vehicle or ambulance—the violations carry fines totaling $540.
Officer Stensgaard has received a Multnomah County summons to appear in traffic court on May 23. Meanwhile Bryant denies he is just stirring up trouble.
Mr. Bryant has balls, but I hope he plans on relocating to a new city as I am sure this officer has many friends just itching to issue a few citations of their own.
In a move that car enthusiasts have been waiting forever for, the Government of Canada has proposed an amendment to the Motor Vehicle Safety Regulations to harmonize the Canadian bumper standard for passenger cars with those in the United States and Europe.
Canada currently has a more stringent bumper safety standard requiring bumpers to withstand front and rear collisions at speeds of up to 8 kph (5 mph). These safety standards were actually developed with the United States and were harmonized until 1982 when the US lowered their speed requirements to 4kph (2.5 mph) for front and rear impacts.
“This proposed amendment would offer more choice to Canadians who wish to import vehicles,” said the Honourable Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. “At the same time, it would help to maintain the safety of Canadian roads.”
I’m not exactly sure how lowering the bumper standards is supposed to “maintain” the safety of Canadian roads. This move is obviously an attempt to increase trade between Canada and the US and has nothing to do with safety, so why spin it that way?
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