OHTA.ca

Hey guys. If you want the back story here is the thread.

Anyways to summarize all that's been happening to me so far

1) I got into a car accident and was ticketed.

2) I turned left in an intersection when the light turned red. (yes, I was already in the intersection when it was green.)

3) Other driver ran a red and T-Boned me.

4) Went to court with insufficent disclosure and was told there would be only me and the officer. (Three other witnesses showed up.)

5) After requesting an adjornment I was forced to proceed unprepared to defend myself.

6) JP found me guilty on the reasoning that two other forgetful witnesses facing the perpendicular light said that their light was red so therefore mine must have been green.

Now my problem is this. I have applied to appeal the dicision of the JP on the grounds that her reasoning is astoundingly flawed, I had insufficient disclosure, ect. ect. ect.

Unfortuneately I am also in the application process for the Forces as a Technician and they require that I have no outstanding legal court dates. I was forced to abandon the appeal but I still am very disgruntled over what happened.

Can I still manage to fight this charge after I have abandoned it?

If so can I hire a paralegal that will not require my presence, at all?

And on a more serious note, can I open a suit against the department because the officer forged my witness statement, admitted to it, and may have therefore commited pergury? (This is an exploritory question so please don't grill me.)

ManlyMinute wrote: And on a more serious note, can I open a suit against the department because the officer forged my witness statement, admitted to it, and may have therefore commited pergury? (This is an exploritory question so please don't grill me.)

Just to clarify: by opening a suit, do you mean you're thinking of suing?

Yes. But think of it more as a hypothetical question.

The night I was hit the cop went straight to the guy who hit me and asked for his version of events. Then right after I got a ticket.

perjury is committed under oath in court

You could hire someone to do the appeal for you. That's how it was handled when I was given a bogus ticket that fortunately had a fatal error on it.

Okay in regards to your inquiry you should know that in Canada our civil law system isn't any where near as F***ed as our neighbours to the South. In Canada you are typically only able to collect two different kinds of damages: special and general damages.

Special damages are those which compensate for quantifiable injuries, things that a dollar value can be attached to (ex: having to repair a window that your neighbour broke).

General damages are damages that compensate for injuries that cannot be expressed in monetary terms (ex loss of future earning capacity because you lost a limb that you would need to do your job).

The third kind of damages are punitive damages (RARE in Canada and typically only occur when the person who commited the tort/wronging were so extreme that it's determined they should incur some additional punishment). Punitive damages are the ones which result in those ridiculous multi-million dollar settlements in the US. If you can prove that this act somehow really affected you financially then you may have a case. But in my honest opinion you're not going to get much (if any) money from suing and it probably isn't worth the cost you'd have to put into trying to get it.

If however you feel that you can prove that this event caused a real financial burden on you then by all means try your luck with suing.

Well he did initially lie while on the stand until I corrected him but I doubt he even realized nor meant to.

I guess I'm just a little angry that he never got my recollection of events then went ahead and wrote a testimony for me anyways. And the fact that I didn't have disclosure at trial but was forced to go ahead anyways made me a little disgruntled.

Screw this, next car I get there's gonna be a dash cam and PVR.

Theoretically you could seek damages in a civil suit that correspond to your increases in car insurance as a result of the officer's forgery, could you not?

I'm not a lawyer but that sounds reasonable. Obviously, you would need to consult a lawyer to get some real legal advice on that issue.

I wonder if you could hire someone to go to the appeal for you and then get an extra copy of the transcript wherein the officer commits the perjury and if it is conclusive, you would theoretically be able to turn it over to the proper authorities and have the officer charged in a criminal court?

I'm just theorizing here, I actually have no idea how it works. Any takers?