Court rules traffic fines collected over 15-year period were illegal

Motorists who paid traffic fines that were illegally imposed and well above the rates stipulated in the original Road Traffic Act (RTA), over a 15-year period ending 2021, are entitled to a refund, Jamaica's Constitutional Court declared in a landmark judgment on Friday.

The ruling by a panel of three judges was made in a lawsuit filed by software engineer Maurice Housen after cops gave him a $5,000 ticket for a speeding violation in July 2021.

The fine for a speeding violation in the 1938 RTA is $800.

The mechanism for the refund will be determined by the judges after attorneys for Housen and the Government make suggestions during a hearing scheduled to take place in March.

Housen contended, through his attorneys Gavin Goffe, Jahmar Clarke and Matthew Royal, from the law firm Myers, Fletcher and Gordon, that at the time he was ticketed, fines or fixed penalties for traffic offences under the 1938 RTA were not increased by the legislature or the transport minister as is mandated in Section 116 of the legislation.

Instead, the fines were purportedly increased by then Finance Minister Dr Omar Davies in 2006 and again in 2007 as if they were taxes or duties under the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act, he asserted.

The Constitutional Court agreed.

“The provisional collection of tax Road Traffic Order of 2006 and…2007 are null and void and of no legal effect,” the court declared in one of 10 orders handed down in the case.

“It is declared that motorists who have paid sums stated on traffic tickets issued between June 15, 2006 and November 3, 2021, which exceed the fixed penalty described in the RTA 1938 are entitled to refunds of sums paid in excess on proof of payment,” the court ruled.

“It is our judgment that the State should not be permitted to retain the proceeds of money it received without lawful authority.”

The judges also ruled that the imposition of a fixed penalty that was in excess of the amount stated in the appendix to the 1938 RTA, as indicated in the ticket issued to Housen, was a breach of his constitutional right to due process as outlined in section 16 (11) of the Jamaican Constitution.

He was awarded $250,000 for the breach.

The court allowed him a 21-day window to pay the $800 fine, as stipulated in the since-repealed RTA of 1938, for the 2021 speeding violation.

- Livern Barrett

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