Traffic Ticket Attorney Gets Judge to Throw Out Red Light Traffic Camera Ticket
It’s a fact of Florida highway driving life that certain small towns are “speed traps” with an entire town police force devoted to writing traffic citations to collect revenue. Now some cities, like Aventura, are looking to raise funds in the same manner, but without the cost of using the police force. Enter the Red Light Traffic Camera. The cameras, operated by a private company called American Traffic Solutions, are installed at select intersections and operate to automatically issue a citation in the mail to anyone that runs a red light. You come home from work and find in the mail a citation issued by a private company that tells you to pay a big fine to your local municipality or come to court. You don’t even get the good decency of being pulled over by a police officer or the opportunity state your case.
What stinks about the red light traffic camera is that then Attorney General Charlie Christ issued an advisory opinion addressing this very issue concluding that they were illegal. Florida Statute Chapter 316, or the “State Uniform Traffic Control” law, requires that traffic tickets be issued only by a law enforcement officer who has observed the alleged civil infraction. Yet Aventura went ahead and installed the traffic devises anyway.
Well, Richard Masone, a resident of Aventura, received one of these tickets in the mail. He got an attorney, Brett Luskin, to fight the case. While it took a year, Mr. Luskin got the case in front of a circuit Judge, who agreed with the Attorney General’s opinion, and threw the case out.
Kudos to Mr. Masone and to Mr. Luskin. Most people would have just paid the ticket and gone on about their business. But they fought an injustice, and their actions will benefit people throughout the State of Florida.
