Court summons for failing to produce driving licence (it had been stolen)

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FeuFollet

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October 2009. Garda roadside control. Garda asks me to produce driving licence. I explain that my driving licence had been stolen and I produce a letter from my local garda station to that effect. Garda hardly looks at it. Within ten days, I also produce a document from Road Tax office showing that my new driving licence is on its way. I thought nothing more of it.

Today, May 2010. I receive a Court Summons alleging that I 'failed or refused to' produce a driving licence.

I am very upset and actually feel sick in my stomach and not quite sure what to do next. FLAC advised me to get a solicitor. Posts on the site suggest that I may not need a solicitor. What worries me is that the Garda in question had a major attitude problem that night (the thrill of catching someone on a boring autumn night) .

So here is what I need:

1) I found loosely related posts which make me think this shouldn't be a big deal but any further advice would be welcome. To represent myself or not? Best case and worst case scenario? To make contact with the Garda in question before the court date or not?

2) Any recommendations of solicitors who specialise in Road Traffic offences would be great as I can't find one easily.

Thanks in advance
 
Call the Sergeant and/or the Superintedant and explain the situation and offer to come in and produce the details that you ALREADY produced.

Make sure before phoning you have dates and times and the Gardas name or number whom you dealt with all those times.

Worst case is that they say "Its in the court system you can make your case in court" because quite often its impossible to get a booked court sitting cancelled.

If that happens call up the court at 9am and ask to speak to the court clerk OR go to court ANY morning early and meet the court clerk and describe your case to them and let them suggest an alternative.

I know people who were due in court who GAVE the clerk their information/documents and that was the end of it.
 
d2x2 said:
October 2009. Garda roadside control. Garda asks me to produce driving licence. I explain that my driving licence had been stolen and I produce a letter from my local garda station to that effect. Garda hardly looks at it. Within ten days, I also produce a document from Road Tax office showing that my new driving licence is on its way. I thought nothing more of it.

Today, May 2010. I receive a Court Summons alleging that I 'failed or refused to' produce a driving licence.

I am very upset and actually feel sick in my stomach and not quite sure what to do next. FLAC advised me to get a solicitor. Posts on the site suggest that I may not need a solicitor. What worries me is that the Garda in question had a major attitude problem that night (the thrill of catching someone on a boring autumn night) .

So here is what I need:

1) I found loosely related posts which make me think this shouldn't be a big deal but any further advice would be welcome. To represent myself or not? Best case and worst case scenario? To make contact with the Garda in question before the court date or not?

2) Any recommendations of solicitors who specialise in Road Traffic offences would be great as I can't find one easily.

Thanks in advance
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The lack of professionalism by the Gardai in this country never fails to amaze me.

The amount of taxpayers time and money that is wasted daily by this form of "policing" and wasting courts time by Gardai is a disgrace.

Follow folder's advice and you should be o.k.
 
If you go to court and explain this to a judge and have the letter from the local garda then you will be fine. No need for a solicitor in my opinion unless you are an extremely nervous person who cannot explain what happened.Bring the etter explaining from the Police station and your new license which will show the new date of issue.

It would be a very harsh judge not to quash it.


It will however cost you a half day from work.
 
Thanks to folder and werner for your sound advice. I am not as worried about it now as I was yesterday.
 
Niallers said:
It will however cost you a half day from work.
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If you are lucky. You could be sitting there from 10am and then at 12 they break for lunch and you have to come back at 2pm and wait all over again.

Especially if there are a lot of people brought in on arrest warrants. They always get brought to the front of the queue.
 
If you tell the judge what you've told us here, the judge should throw it out and probably by fairly annoyed with the guard for wasting the courts time.
IMO it would be a waste of money getting a sol to represent you in what is obv a clean open shut case.
I wouldn't be loosing any sleep over it.
 
What you should have done was produce the license when you got it even if it was outside the 10 days you had to produce it. That was what was demanded of you and you failed to do it.
I appreciate you produced a letter explaining it had been stolen and also one that acknowledged you had applied for a new one, but you still needed to produce the license.
Also was there a lengthy time frame from when it was stolen and when you were stopped this has a big impact I would think as if it was a long time then it may have been seen that you weren't bothered with getting until you had to.
 
werner said:
The lack of professionalism by the Gardai in this country never fails to amaze me.

The amount of taxpayers time and money that is wasted daily by this form of "policing" and wasting courts time by Gardai is a disgrace.

Follow folder's advice and you should be o.k.
Click to expand...

The willingness of citizens to bad mouth their police force never fails to amaze me. For unbiased information about the Gardai, see here:
 
Gianni,

I am going to court because I was not able to produce a driving licence.

My licence had been stolen. I reported it to the Gardai once in Limerick, where it was stolen. They did nothing. They didn't care. They were not bothered investigating the place where it was stolen. They were bothered with me filling a form to get a replacement licence. But they didn't even have the form for me to fill out and they told me to go to another garda station. In Limerick, which I didn't know at all and where I was in shock. My jacket and money were stolen at the same time. I had to insist and wait until one garda listened and took out his little notepad and wrote down my details. He said he would investigate, check CCTV footage and would call me. Did I ever hear from the gardai in Limerick? No. Never. Did that even make it into PULSE where it would then have required proper follow up? Your guess.

I had to go to my local garda station to report my licence as stolen. No, wait I had to report it as lost because otherwise I would still be waiting for someone to fetch the 'stolen property' form.

Now I drive along nicely within the speed limit, a garda decides that the form I produce is not good enough because it's late at night and that garda thinks she's... Columbo? or one of the guys from a Chips episode...

and *I* end up going to court over it?

Far from me the idea of bad mouthing the police force but I am absolutely gutted that the thieves who could have been easily caught (because it was in a particular place where only a few people had access) are probably still running free unhindered by that friendly police force while I am now worrying sick over silly court papers, while I will have to take a half day of work, while I will be running around trying to get my name cleared.

Now, do you see why some might think we are wasting our courts system 's time and not making good use of the garda force?
 
How long between it being stolen and him stopping shouldnt really be relevant. One garda station said it was bascially ok to use the form if they let him fill it out and drive out of the garda station knowing he had no licence and then you get a complete different attitude from another one. The law is the Law so the guards in the stations hould of said this was not enough if that was the case I think it's a simple case of the guard doing the road check wanted to catch someone for something and you unfortunately happened to get it. Im sure itll all be fine I cant see a judge wanting to spend time on a case like that.
 
Bear in mind that the driving license is only a document showing that you have a license to drive.

By not carrying it does not mean you do not actually have a license to drive merely just a document to prove it. You are still listed on the departments systems as being a licensed driver so the Garda can still give you a producer. You may meet a Garda who will just slap some points on you for not carrying your LOST license with you because they are a prat but the majority would not.

So get the documents completed in the Garda station and photocopy it and keep a copy in the car until you get the replacement from the Motor Tax Office and if you get a producer you should have your license back by then anyway.(or should have at least)
 
I think the timing is relevant eg say 6 months had lapsed since he had it stolen, that would indicate to me that the op didn't think it necessary to carry a license. everyone is obliged to carry a license when driving.
If he had only lost it in the previous few weeks it was excessive. None the less he should have produced it when he received it even if it was outside the 10 days given to produce.
 
Timing certainly was an issue.

My stolen license was issued by another EU country. It took me two letters and three months to get the documentation sent to me and this is when I was controlled here.

I visited the Garda station with the receipt for new license as soon as I got it and I asked if I was required to do anything else or was I done. I was not asked to come back and produce the actual license.

I regret not having complained when the Gardai didn't do their job, didn't enter my complaint in the system, didn't follow up.
 
The guard may have been wrong, but you are stressing yourself out over a minor matter.

Given what you have said here, any reasonable judge will dismiss this or at the absolute, absolute worst, you will get a small fine. You may have to sit through a stressful day in court to get either result. If you have never been to court before and do not know how it works you may find it difficult to know when your case is called, how to address the judge and so on- it is all very very fast paced and your case is only a very minor matter so the judge won't want to listen to a big case being presented.

An alternative would be to pay a solicitor to appear on your behalf. I doubt if you would have to pay more than €100 to have someone deal with this for you. If you use a solicitor who deals with a good deal of district court work it may be less. Then you will not have to go yourself. You may be the kind of person who wants their voice heard in court, to see justice done so up to yourself. TBH I wouldn't go near the place if I were you ( speaking as someone with a good deal of experience of district court!).
 
Thanks to all who advised me

Thanks to all who advised me. I really appreciated all your words of wisdom. Your messages most certainly helped me put this in perspective and relax about it somewhat. I was still nervous and furious when I went to Court today.

For anyone who comes across this post in the future and wants to know what worked and didn't, here it is:

- Contacted Garda before court date to offer to present driving licence but never heard from them again.
- Contacted Court Clerk but was advised I still needed to come to court on the date.
- Court staff advised me to show up even if Garda assured me the matter would be struck out*
- Went to the Garda in Court and presented my licence early, and Garda told me she would have it struck out. *
- On advice of Court staff, I still waited the whole day to hear the judge say that it was struck out. *

* Staff advised me to attend until I heard my name as there had been cases of Garda being replaced, information being lost etc and I didn't want to take any chances.

While all the cases presented were quite trivial (missing NCT, missing tax disc, red lights...) , I found the day in court very interesting, educational, boring at the same time and the Judge was very fair and reasonable etc. I love the interesting characters who were there during the day.
 
Delighted everything worked out for you.
I'm sorry if my post re timing was annoying but I still think it was relevant.
You have to remember that guards are told tall tails all the time in these scenarios and they can only do there best at times. some of them are very ignorant and forget the fact that they are public servants.
Well done on coming back with the feedback - which to me sounds like you had a positive experience all round.
 
similar problem

Hi I have a similar problem , although more straight forward than the previous
poster's problem.
Basically I had to produce my licence back in May this year (2010)
which I did ( two days later).

Then a knock on my door on 12th november,
Its a garda with a summons for 'failing to produce my licence ' !

I checked the form I received from the station and found out it had said that my licence was invalid because it was out of date .
My licence is not out of date , its valid till 2012 !!

thay had put jan 2010 on the form instead of 2012..
So obviously it came up 'no valid licence produced' so I was issued a summons ...
Any advice appreciated
Cheers
 
JAVAGEM said:
Hi I have a similar problem , although more straight forward than the previous
poster's problem.
Basically I had to produce my licence back in May this year (2010)
which I did ( two days later).

Then a knock on my door on 12th november,
Its a garda with a summons for 'failing to produce my licence ' !

I checked the form I received from the station and found out it had said that my licence was invalid because it was out of date .
My licence is not out of date , its valid till 2012 !!

thay had put jan 2010 on the form instead of 2012..
So obviously it came up 'no valid licence produced' so I was issued a summons ...
Any advice appreciated
Cheers
Click to expand...

I would contact the garda in question, ask to meet him or her and bring with you your licence as proof of its vailidity. Typo's occur all the time and the garda will or should understand. He or she will or should then say that they will request that the case be thrown out on your behalf. It will still go to court but you will be 100% in the clear. If I was you I would give the station a call asap and ask to meet with the garda.
 
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