Daniel Spisak on Technology

This is a rough draft of a letter I am working on to send to:

The OC Register
The Consumerist
Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights

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Dear Sirs,

I am writing to you because I have been forced into a position recently by the Orange County Superior Court that I find to be completely egregious and unfair to myself. Earlier this year I was issued a fix-it ticket by CHP to get the registration of my car up to date. Within two days of being issued this ticket I made my way to the DMV and got the matter with the vehicles registration taken cared of.

At this point I should mention that I am currently a full-time student at UC Irvine working to complete my bachelors degree in Computer Science while also working on the side as a consultant for a technology firm up in Pasadena. Because I am constantly busy with both classes and work from the office in addition to having to be on-site with some of our clients I sometimes have a tendency to forget things or let them get buried.

Because of the particular amount of work my recent classload has been I had been unable to work as many hours as I normally would and this affected my income accordingly. So when I got a letter from the Orange County Superior Court reminding me to pay the 10 dollar fine and send in proof of the ticket being taken cared of I did not have the money at the time to pay this seemingly small bill. At this point both classes and work conspired to bury me with their respective loads and the letter passed out of my memory. It was then at this point three weeks later that I received another letter from the court, this time with a much different message. In this letter I was told I now owed the court $425 and had 10 days to pay the fines or have my wages garnished and my drivers license suspended.

Mind you, at this point I had taken care of the ticket in question. DMV records could easily be checked and shown that my vehicle now had current registration on it for the 2007 year. At this point I did have just barely enough money to pay the original $10 fine, of which I made a photocopy of and then sent the check and the original $10 letter back to the court.

Fast forward a few weeks and I get a letter back from the court claiming that my partial $10 payment towards my fine was accepted and that if they did not receive $325 more from me they would suspend my license and garnish my wages. Mind you that I have absolutely zero criminal record and zero points on my drivers license. The only way I was able to pay this outrageous extortion was to get help from my parents to pay this fine.

At this point I am in a place where I am extremely furious with the Orange County Superior Court because I believe what they did to me is criminal in nature. My original fine was for $10. Yes I was late in mailing the money and the proof of my registration to the court but I fail to see how in any persons good conscience a late fee of 4250% more then my original fine is anything but fair and reasonable. I am perfectly willing to pay the court a reasonable late fee fine. But not the mockery of a late fee they sent me and threatened to garnish my wages for. How on Earth can this kind of behavior by the OC Superior Court system be considered fair, legal, and in good faith?