By: Jen Russon
There is good news for motorists who received citations at Tamarac’s red light cameras prior to May 1, after Broward and Miami-Dade County courts ruled that thousands of the violations be thrown out.
“After filing years of motions against red light cameras in Tamarac, our lawyers created a huge back up of cases. I believe in the interest of judicial economy, Tamarac decided to start with a clean slate and dismiss what we estimate to be thousands of cases,” said Ted Hollander, a partner at The Ticket Clinic.
Hollander’s statement was confirmed by Tamarac city officials.
According to Tamarac Spokesperson Elise Boston, after the Broward Sheriff’s Office in Tamarac received thousands of trial subpoenas, Tamarac elected to dismiss all the tickets issued six months prior to the October 2018 order as a group. She added that the tickets were being thrown out because they were likely no longer valid. She said officers had received thousands of subpoenas for red light tickets, and the opportunity for a “speedy trial” passed.
Generally, Florida rules of traffic court state that “speedy trial” expires after six months and a ticket must be dismissed if requested at a hearing.
Boston said, “Rather than utilizing employee time, clerk time, and court resources to set each of the several thousand cases for an individual hearing and have each case dismissed one by one, the tickets were dismissed.”
The Tamarac city clerk’s office confirmed that in late November, the decision was made to dismiss all red light camera violation tickets issued prior to May 1, 2018.
On November 27, a Miami-Dade judge issued an order granting the Ticket Clinic’s motion to dismiss all red light camera tickets; however each municipality is able to authorize its own red light camera program if it wants to.
The city of Tamarac has indicated that it wants to keep its red light camera program in place.
“The dismissal of old traffic tickets has no effect on Tamarac’s red light camera program as a whole,” said Boston.