If your ticket is NOT a parking ticket.
After receiving an Offense Notice (traffic violation ticket), you have three options:
If you do not choose one of the above options within 15 days of receiving the traffic violation ticket, or if you do not appear for your trial, a Justice of the Peace will review your case and may enter a conviction without you there.
If your ticket is a parking ticket. You have two options:
How long is a piece of string? The variations are infinite. It all depends on the charge you were given. There is nothing to prevent a person charged from defending themselves but, there is also an age-old saying that states, “A lawyer that represents themselves has a fool for a client.”
It’s all very well for you to go into court armed with a list of questions for the officer but, if you do not know what the answers should be, how would you know if the answer given is correct and/or how to proceed from there?
POINTTS’ paralegals are qualified. They have the skills, knowledge and ongoing education to be able to provide the very best defence to whatever charge you may be facing. POINTTS has the resources to fight your ticket on your behalf. You may be required to attend court as well as you would be the only person that can tell the court what happened from your perspective. It may equally be possible that, depending on the charge, you would not have to go to court.
A person charged that wishes to request a court date MUST attend the court as indicated on the reverse of the ticket. There are only a very few courts left in Ontario that permits a trial request to be mailed in.
You stand in line to get to a wicket in order to ask for the form to request a trial. You take it away and fill it in at the tables provided. You then take it back to the wicket where the court clerk will probably tell you that a trial notice will be mailed to you in due course. Depending on the court location, this could take a few weeks or many months before the court administration decides what the court date will be.
Your POINTTS representative will manage all this for you. It is part of a professional service, no matter where the court is located in Ontario.
There are 669 different acts listed on the Ontario Government’s E-Laws website. Most of them have offences and penalties for infractions committed.
The administration of all these acts is governed by an all-encompassing act, the Provincial Offences Act.
The first amount shown on the left side of the ticket is the “Set Fine” as determined by the Chief Justice of Ontario. The amount in the box to its right is the total amount payable after the Victim Fine Surcharge and court costs have been added to the set fine.