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License Suspension in Los Angeles with no warning at all..Any help out there??? No pull overs, help!

My daughter is 19 years old and living in Los Angeles are and going to UC Irvine and will graduate next year with honors from there and move on to medical school. She was traveling between school, work and pre-med mentoring and a cop pulled her over for not using her turn signal. She was 2 hours from home and somehow she let the courtdate go by It is a year later and she was told her license was suspended by an officer who told her to call the L.A. Court who told her to call the collection agency. This agency told her that they never had to contact her at all that she owed them? That she now owed them $2400.00 for this no signal and a failure to appear and she could not do anything get her license back except pay the entire amount. This starving student can't do this!? HELP US!Appeal

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Attorney answers (1)

Reputation Level 8
Your daughter may wish to calendar a court date the the department that issued the Failure to Appear. Once there, your daughter will have to explain the circumstances of her non-appearance. Simply saying that she forgot will usually not please the court. She should not make up a story or lie to the court though.

There is a chance that she can appear at the court, enter a plea to the underlying infraction, remit a bail amount and have the commissioner dismiss the FTA (which is technically a misdemeanor). If the FTA is dismissed, request on the record that bench warrant be quashed and the fines be terminated.

If the commissioner is not willing to dismiss the FTA she can request the court to modify her fines for the FTA. Often times the commissioners will be understanding, especially in today's economic environment.

Once the FTA matter is settled, your daughter will need to get a copy of the abstract and send it to the DMV Mandatory Action Division to have the suspension lifted.

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