Our office is 5 minutes away from the traffic court in Bakersfield at 3131 Arrow St. About ten times a month I go to court and see the same thing: People throwing away thousands of dollars because they do not understand traffic law.

This week I saw a man plead out to $4000 dollars in fines in less than five minutes. I believe I could have gotten those cases dismissed and saved that man thousands of dollars. Instead, he will be on a payment plan for years and at some point, he’s likely to miss a payment, draw another $600 penalty, and get his license suspended once again.

The horrible tragedy is repeated time after time. A person goes to Bakersfield traffic court for the first time. They see a long line of people in front of them plead guilty when asked by the judge for their plea. The judge reduces their fine by a hundred dollars or so. They walk out the door never realizing just how much they could have saved in fines and insurance money if they would have known what to do.

I will give you an example: A defendant moves out of town for a few years and comes back with a bunch of overdue speeding tickets. The failures to appear (FTA’s) surcharges have added up and now the fines are over $4000. The defendant does not have a strategy. He just wants the hold lifted off his license so he can get to work. He pleads to all the charges and gets a reduction of a fine down to $2500. He doesn’t realize that he probably could have gotten the entire fine dismiss if he had hired an attorney familiar with Bakersfield Court. He doesn’t realize he will be paying hundreds of dollars more in insurance for the next three years.

Or someone gets some traffic camera tickets in the mail but doesn’t pay attention to them. A failure to appear is given and now they owe over $1000 per ticket.

Every day at 7:30 AM you see the traffic line filled with situations just like these form outside the door at 3131 Arrow St. People take off time from work, or away from their kids, to go into court and try to get their fine reduced. They shouldn’t. Instead, they should hire a professional. They should save time, keep living their lives, and send someone who knows what goes on in court and will get the best resolution on the case.

For a free consultation on your ticket, call the traffic law professionals Mark Bigger & Paul Harman of Bigger & Harman, APC, at (661) 859-1177. We’ll give it to you straight and let you make the final call on whether to hire an attorney to handle your traffic ticket.