Why man is still paying for a 2004 speeding ticket

When Dan Laird was cited for speeding outside Wheaton's Franklin Middle School on the first day of classes in 2004, he paid his $75 fine and thought the matter was closed.

Eleven years later, he discovered it wasn't.

When he went to renew his driver's license last week, Laird discovered a mix-up in the DuPage County Circuit Clerk's office was going to cost him an extra $120 — and the chances of recovering that money are remote at best.

The story begins in 2004 when Laird, who now lives in North Aurora, was stopped by Wheaton police on Main Street near Franklin Middle School and ticketed for driving 31 mph in a 20 mph school zone.

“Wheaton enthusiastically enforces the strict letter of the law,” Laird said. “I knew what I was dealing with when I lived there, so I paid my fine and went about my life.”

Fast forward to earlier this month when Laird attempted to renew his driver's license and was told he couldn't because he had a “failure to pay” notation on his account.

“As my license was near its expiration date, I did not have time to investigate or appeal this and had no choice but to pay the fine a second time,” Laird said.

County officials say Laird never should have been allowed to pay the initial $75 fine in 2004 because speeding in a school zone was an offense that required a court date.

“(Laird) is absolutely correct. We messed up in 2004. We accepted his $75 payment but it was never applied to his case because it was a must-appear case,” said Dewey Hartman, chief deputy of the circuit clerk's office. “Unfortunately, he didn't know that. We didn't send him any kind of notice to tell him that.

“We should have rescheduled it and put it in the courtroom and sent him a notice. That did not happen in 2004. We did an audit in 2012 and this case popped up as having $75 sitting on the case. We sent it to the court and the judge entered a conviction on it.”

That conviction meant Laird was fined $120 on top of the $75 he'd already paid and a hold was placed on his driver's license.

Court records show the county did send Laird a letter on Aug. 17, 2012, informing him of his Sept. 12, 2012, court date, but it was sent to a Wheaton address where Laird hadn't lived since 2008 and was never forwarded.

Even though his office admits the error, Hartman said Laird's only remedy is to take the case to court and ask a judge to vacate the fine and judgment.

“I can let him do that for free but I can't guarantee that ... the court is actually going to do anything for him,” Hartman said. “They could vacate the judgment but that's a court decision and our court has been very, very strict about the fact that the circuit clerk's office, even if we made the error, we cannot do anything in the case to correct it.

“We're more than happy to tell the court we made the mistake, but we can't do it on our own. We're not a party to the case. We're simply the record keeper.”

Laird said he's unsure whether he wants to go back to court on the 2004 ticket.

“I understand that getting any money back might require a trip back to the courtroom, which is a waste of taxpayer money and my time,” he said. “It would be nice for them to say, ‘We messed up and charged you fines and late fees you did nothing to deserve. We are going to review our processes and make sure it doesn't happen again.'”

Hartman said he is “more than happy to send a letter and indicate our apologies,” but is unable to do anything beyond that without the case going back to court.

Laird says the most important lesson he's learned from all this is to do everything you can to stay out of the system.

“I learned again what happens when you are at the mercy of this bureaucracy,” he said. “Justice is a nice word, but it doesn't apply many times when you enter the courtroom.”