Legal Ruling Leads To High Cost To Challenge Fines

Wednesday, 18. November 2009

In a bizarre new legal ruling if you go to court and defend yourself against a speeding offence, and get acquitted you will still have costs to pay under new Government rules. The new Ministry of Justice scheme will result in a defendant acquitted in the courts to only be reimbursed at current legal aid rates, regardless of their actual level of costs. In many instances this could lead to innocent people paying the fine as it would work out cheaper, something that clearly hasn’t passed the Government by. A solicitor, Philip Somarakis said ‘It is a scandalous attempt by the Government to undermine the publics right to a fair trial.’ ‘We estimate that an acquitted person may be lucky to get 25% of their costs back, whereas under the current scheme the overwhelming majority of costs are normally recovered.’ We also understand that the new rules could impact on businesses making a defence against alleged health and safety breaches, clamed Somarakis. There is an online petition for those that feel strongly about this, you can register by going to http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/costsrecovery Oops the petition has now closed but it may be worth reading what they say on there about the number of cases each year that go to court that should never have happened! Interesting stuff! By Graham Hill