What Should I Do If I Lost My Traffic Ticket?

Life happens. As if getting pulled over and ticketed isn’t enough, you got extremely busy and now cannot find the actual citation. Unfortunately, claiming that you lost the ticket will not get you out of paying fines or showing up in court. There are a few things you can do to in order to salvage the situation, and acting quickly is key to mitigating the risk of unnecessary penalties.

First Steps

Regardless of whether or not you plan on fighting the ticket, you will need to know how much the ticket costs and when your court date is.  North Carolina provides a way to search for your ticket online at www.nccourts.org and some south Carolina courts can be found online at www.sccourts.org; however, many small town courts are not listed in the SC court system for traffic tickets.   A traffic ticket law firm such as Nosal & Jeter, LLP can also help locate your ticket if you remember where the ticket was written. Additionally, you can call either the administrative offices of the county where you were ticketed or the court that would handle your ticket.  If you are unsure about your court date call an attorney immediately, since a failure to appear in South Carolina will result in you being convicted in your absence.

If you are not sure which court or county to contact, try these memory triggers:

• Was the ticket at the city level or county level?
• Who gave you the ticket – a city police officer, a trooper or a sheriff’s deputy?
• Where were you when you received the ticket?

In South Carolina, trial courts typically handle traffic citations. A magistrate court would handle a county-level ticket, and a municipal court would handle city-level infractions.

Making the Call

Generally, a court or administrative office will only give ticket information to the person who received the citation. Once you get in touch with the right office, you will want to ask for several pieces of information, including the fine and the court costs. It is also important to know the deadline for submitting payment on the ticket and whether or not you are required to appear in court.

Pleading Guilty or Not Guilty

In essence, if you pay the ticket fines, you are pleading guilty to the infraction on the citation. In addition to eating that cost, you should be aware that pleading guilty or no contest to a ticket means you may acquire points on your driver’s license and you will likely see your car insurance rate jump.

For those reasons, many people choose to fight their tickets, which will require attending a court hearing and providing evidence that you are not guilty. The benefits of contesting your ticket are that if you are found not guilty, you will not have to pay any fines and your insurance will not take a hit.

At Nosal & Jeter, LLP  we have a keen insight into how traffic court works, as we have spent years helping clients dispute tickets. We can help you build a strong defense to hopefully have any charges reduced or dismissed.

Source: DMV.org, “Lost Traffic Ticket in South Carolina,” 2014