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Do not go to court on the date shown on your Newburgh traffic ticket - do this instead

It’s a sight a see every single time I’m in Newburgh traffic court: a person shows up, ticket in hand, expecting to get their day in court because that’s the date written on the ticket, only to be told that the actual court date would be mailed to them later. It doesn’t matter if they live around the block or drove for three hours, it’s still really aggravating to find out that a trip to court was wasted time.

Don’t let this happen to you.

Check out this typical traffic ticket:

The highlighted date is when a reasonable person might think that they should go to court. Don’t do this!

If you’re not an attorney who looks at dozens of these a week, you might say to yourself, “Looks like I have to go to court on that date.” The truth is that the date on the ticket is a deadline for sending in your plea, and nothing else.

You don’t need to go to court to file a plea

Here are some options for telling the judge how you plead in your traffic case:

  1. Show up in person, wait for the clerk to talk to you, and get told that you’ll get a court date in the mail

  2. Fill in section B, make a copy, and mail the ticket to court, and get a court date in the mail

  3. Hire Selby Legal and your plea of “not guilty” will be sent in for you, and then your attorney will get your court date in the mail and appear for you

(If it’s not obvious, pleading guilty to a traffic ticket is usually a bad idea, especially if there are points involved.)

Call Selby Legal for free legal advice on your Newburgh ticket

Get a free consultation by calling Selby Legal, or just uploading your traffic ticket here. If you decide to hire us after you talk wtih an attorney, filing a plea for your traffic ticket is always included in the fee.

Image credit: Mitchazenia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons