Wednesday, August 15, 2018
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Superior Court Appellate Division:
Man Ticketed in Lancaster Entitled By Statute to Trial Closer to Home
By a MetNews Staff Writer
A man who was pulled over for speeding in Lancaster and ordered to appear in the Michael Antonovich Antelope Valley Courthouse should have been granted a transfer to the Metropolitan Courthouse, two miles from his home, as a matter of right, the Los Angeles Superior Court Appellate Division has held.
Judge Alex Ricciardulli wrote the opinion, filed Aug. 2 and made public yesterday. It grants Shahab Amir’s petition for a writ of mandate directing the Superior Court to transfer the case, relieving the motorist of a 70-mile trek to the Lancaster facility.
Amir had asked the California Highway Patrol (“CHP”) officer who wrote the speeding ticket to specify the county seat as the place to appear, but the officer declined to do so.
Commissioner Denies Transfer
Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Robert A. McSorley denied his request, at arraignment, to transfer the case. He noted that the CHP office was in Lancaster and the next closest courthouse was 54 miles away, commenting:
“These distances are far too great for the traffic enforcement agencies to expend the funds to have their officers travel in order to appear on a single traffic citation in view of current public funding budget problems.”
The defendant sought a writ of mandate. McSorley declined to vacate his order even after the Appellate Division announced it was considering issuance of a peremptory writ in the first instance.
Vehicle Code Section
At issue was an interpretation of Vehicle Code §40502 which lists the places that a person who is arrested for a non-felony violation can be ordered to appear. It specifies that “[u]pon demand of the person arrested,” proceedings are to be held “before a judge or other magistrate having jurisdiction of the offense at the county seat of the county in which the offense is alleged to have been committed.”
This applies, under the statute, “only if the person arrested resides, or the person’s principal place of employment is located, closer to the county seat than to the magistrate nearest or most accessible to the place where the arrest is made.”
McSorley noted that no published opinions had interpreted §40502, which underwent several amendments since being moved in 1959 from its former spot at §739. However, the pre-1959 section had been interpreted by the Court of Appeal as requiring the trial court to grant a demand by the defendant to have proceedings set at the county seat.
Ricciardulli found no meaningful difference in the wording in the older and newer provisions. He noted a nonsubstantive deletion of the word “or” which he said was “effectuated for grammatical purposes.”
He declared:
“The county seat of Los Angeles County is the City of Los Angeles….Petitioner established he ‘resides, or [his] principal place of employment is located, closer to the county seat than to the magistrate nearest or most accessible to the place where the arrest is made.’…Accordingly, respondent did not have discretion to deny petitioner’s motion to set the place for his trial in the county seat.”
The jurist commented:
“Respondent relied on the expense and inconvenience to the citing agency in traveling to the county seat in denying defendant’s motion. Yet, the statute is silent as to such considerations, requiring simply that, once criteria regarding proximity to work or residence are satisfied, a request must be granted ‘upon demand.’ A court may disregard the literal words of a statute to avoid an absurd result…, however, saving a cited person from having to travel—as in the present case—dozens of miles to litigate a traffic infraction is a rational result.”
The case is Amir v. Superior Court, 2018 S.O.S. 3993.
Amir was represented by Abtin Amir of Los Angeles. There was no appearance for the respondent Superior Court.
Copyright 2018, Metropolitan News Company