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Riverside Superior Court Appellate Division:
Demurrers Based on Use of Traffic Ticket Form That’s Been Superseded Were Properly Overruled
By a MetNews Staff Writer
A traffic ticket is not invalid based on use of a Judicial Council form that’s been superseded, the Appellate Division of the Riverside Superior Court has declared.
The case was filed on April 28; Div. Two of the Fourth District Court of Appeal on Friday issued an order declining to transfer the case to itself; and the opinion was publicly posted yesterday.
Represented by San Bernardino attorney J. Brian Campbell, two motorists, in unrelated cases, each cited by a California Highway Patrol officer for a traffic violation, sought writs of mandate/prohibition requiring that the Superior Court vacate orders overruling their demurrers and, instead, sustaining them. They argued that the citations do not constitute valid complaints because each was on a form the Judicial Council has withdrawn and replaced.
In a per curiam opinion, the Appellate Division rejected the contention.
Vehicle Code Section
At issue was an application of Vehicle Code §40513(b) which says that “whenever the written notice to appear has been prepared on a form approved by the Judicial Council, an exact and legible duplicate copy of the notice when filed with the magistrate shall constitute a complaint….”
The judges posed this question:
“Does ‘a form approved by the Judicial Council’ include a form that has been approved by the Judicial Council, or does it exclusively mean a form that is currently approved by the Judicial Council?”
The answer, they said, is that “any interpretation of Vehicle Code section 40513, subdivision (b) that mandates use of the most recent form on pain of demurrer retreats toward a type of formalism in pleading that the Legislature eschewed almost a century ago.”
They declared:
“[T]he once-approved Judicial Council forms the CHP officers issued to defendants in this case fully honor the Legislature’s directions as to the information to be included in a complaint…, and fully serve the purpose of such a pleading.”
Substantial Compliance
The judges went on to say:
“Substantial compliance, rather than strict compliance, is the appropriate lens to use, as has been understood in the analogous non-traffic context….Here, while there are a number of minor and superficial differences between the forms used in the present cases and the current Judicial Council form, the core substance is overwhelmingly the same….
“We therefore conclude that once a notice to appear form has been approved by the Judicial Council, it is “a form approved by the Judicial Council” within the meaning of Vehicle Code section 40513, subdivision (b). The fact that the Judicial Council has recently promulgated a new version of the applicable form, or has replaced it with a differently numbered form, does not, ipso facto, change that character.”
They added:
We do not endeavor here to address under what circumstances an older or modified form becomes incompetent for this purpose, because in the case before us any deviations from the current form are immaterial in substance. Nevertheless, we strongly encourage law enforcement agencies that use a Judicial Council form for a notice to appear to use the current version of that form. Failure to do so remains a violation of the rules of court…, notwithstanding the fact that the error does not automatically grant defendants a remedy in their ensuing traffic case.”
The case is Beasley v. Superior Court (People), 2025 S.O.S. 1327.
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