Q&A - Traffic Ticket with Impossible Date

I received a speeding ticket. which I was shocked as I didn't think I was speeding. When I looked at the ticket closely, I noticed the date of Feb 30th instead of Feb 20th.

I disputed the ticket at the end of Feb, before the 30th of Feb would have even occured. When I disputed it, the lady at ICBC wrote on the dispute form that the date on the ticket says Feb 30th. She said she didn't know if they would void the ticket or not, as it was not her decision, and that they would mail me to let me know.

It ends up, I do have a court date to dispute this ticket. This was a lot quicker than I was expecting, as people have said that it sometimes takes up to a year to get a court date.

Any advice?

image of part of traffic ticket showing bad issue date

Answer

Yes, February 30 will never appear on any calendar, leap year or not.

This should have meant that the people at the ICBC Ticket Unit would have taken one look at it, put a big red CANCELLED stamp on it and returned it to the officer suggesting that he/she consider issuing a corrected ticket to you.

The date shown on the ticket is the focus of your defense, but could still be corrected, either prior to the trial commencing or after the officer has given their evidence in chief. It will depend on what the JJP will allow. The law permits it, but in my experience the JJPs I observed would never permit it saying that if you couldn't issue the ticket properly in the first place, don't bother trying to fix it now.

We got around that by simply handing the driver a new ticket with the correction made on the court date prior to trial. We proceeded on the new ticket and asked that the old one be withdrawn.

So, if the mistake is corrected, you will be defending yourself trying to establish that you were driving at 30 km/h or less in the school zone.

You may wish to request disclosure of the Crown's case prior to trial, simply search disclosure on this site for more information.

If not, then you can simply point out the issue of the date at the completion of the Crown's case (before you are asked to testify or call witnesses) and let the JJP deal with it. It is clearly a 3 and not a 2, as compared to the 2 used in the month.

Q&A

Traffic Tickets