Software engineer wants $1m in lawsuit over ‘illegal’ traffic fines

A SOFTWARE engineer who sued the State for alleged breaches of his constitutional rights after he was reportedly issued several alleged illegal traffic tickets over a 15-year period is requesting damages in the sum of $1 million.

The Constitutional Court is to hand down its decision on January 26 of next year.

Maurice Housen, who had only produced a copy of a $5,000 speeding ticket, issued in May 2021, is contending that the tickets were illegal because of legislative missteps in the process used to increase fines for traffic offences.

Housen contends that at the time the tickets were issued, fines or fixed penalties for traffic offences under the 1938 Road Traffic Act (RTA) had not been increased by the legislature or the minister of transport as mandated in Section 116 of the RTA.

Instead, the fines were purportedly increased by then Finance Minister Dr Omar Davies in 2006 and 2007 as if they were taxes or duties under the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act.

The Government, however, used a marathon November 2021 meeting of the legislature to pass a bill correcting the misstep days after the Supreme Court granted Housen an injunction blocking the police from issuing tickets that impose fines above the 2006 rates.

Housen’s lawsuit seeks, among other things, an order for the Government to refund motorists, who, he contends, were illegally fined over the 15-year period ending in 2021 and a declaration that his constitutional rights to due process were breached by the imposition of the “illegal” penalties.

On Wednesday, during a hearing in the Constitutional Court at the Supreme Court, the claimant, through his attorney-at-law Gavin Goffe, told the panel of judges comprising Justices Dale Palmer, Carole Barnaby, and Tara Carr that a $1 million would be an “appropriate” but “modest” sum to compensate his client for the infringement of his constitutional rights.

But government lawyer Lisa White vigorously opposed the sum while noting that if the judges were to rule in his favour, “full recourse lies elsewhere” and also that the sum would have to be “nominal”.

“This would not be an appropriate place for constitutional redress,” White argued while reiterating that Housen’s right had not been breached based on the evidence before the court.

PROOF OF DAMAGE

Additionally, she argued that Goffe had not demonstrated how his client had arrived at the amount for the damages.

“There would have to be before any damages are awarded, if the court is minded, some evidence to show what, if any, loss has been occasioned to the claimant because he was issued with the traffic ticket which has been stayed. And, if it is a monetary loss, there are other aspects of the orders being sought that will cover that in respect to the refund,” she added.

Goffe had argued that the imposition of the fixed penalties in excess of the fines listed under the Road Traffic Act 1938 was a breach of his client’s constitutional right to due process and asked that the courts grant a declaration to that effect.

The lawyer also asked for a declaration that all the traffic tickets issued contained fixed penalties in excess of those stipulated in the act to be declared null and void.

At the same time, Goffe, who was asking for an order for restitution and recovery of all fixed penalties paid to the Collectorate of Taxes in respect to the tickets, acceded to restitution only for the excess payment.

Among Goffe’s arguments were that the concession from the Government that the provisional collection of tax orders for 2006 and 2007 are null and void warrant an order for all the tickets that were issued to all motorists for that period who are part of the class suit brought by his client be declared null and void.

He also contended that once a ticket had been paid, a traffic court judge had no power to quash, modify, or set aside the fixed penalty. Similarly, he argued that the high court also lacked the power or the jurisdiction to validate the action of the Collectorate of Taxes or the police.

White, on the other hand, argued that once a fixed penalty has been paid, it is tantamount to a guilty plea and that the issuance of a ticket is part of a prosecutorial process.

“It is only those persons who would have paid the fixed penalty and who would have chosen not to go to the parish court who would be eligible for refund and who would then assert that ‘I seek to challenge the fine’,” she said.

According to her, those persons who had the benefit of the parish court judge’s deliberations would be getting a second “bite of the cherry”.

Further, she submitted that the minister sought only to increase the fines to what was in the appendix of the Road Traffic Act and that the nullity would be the excess and not the entire amount.

Meanwhile, Goffe, earlier in the proceeding, sought the court’s permission to relieve his client and the others involved in the suit of their obligation to produce copies of the tickets they had been issued and proof of payment but was refused by the judges.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com