Man Tries to Pay Fine With Pennies, Court Says NO, Issues Warrant

[Ravi]

Soggy gets pwned AGAIN!!!

 

[Tech_Esq]

Hey, I brought MY evidence to the fucking party, dude. what the fuck did you bring?

I thought we settled this 8 pages ago. What happened?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

which, again, is about a thousand times MORE than anything you've brought to this thread thus far. so, thank YOU for playing.

Ya, cause YOUR opinion is so much more sound then anyone elses. You are such a dumb shit some times.

 

[Shogun]

well.. that and the EVIDENCE that I've taken the time to dig up and post..

say, again, where is yours? Why are you such a giant fucking expert without the slightest piece of evidence to support your arguement?

I've posted mine.. why can't you manage to do the same?

 

[Missourian]

Link from Snopes.com

snopes.com: Debt Payment in Pennies

 

[Shogun]

that pretty much reinforces what i've been saying.

 

[Tech_Esq]

....outside the immediate presence of the court and consists of disobedience of a court's prior order.

May it please the court:

I draw your attention to the second part of the statement above "Disobedience of a court's prior order." In the instant case, there was not "disobedience" to the court's prior order to pay a fine of $56 dollars. In fact, the evidence is that he paid the $56 with legal tender of the United States within the time specified by the court. Additionally, the evidence is that the defendant made a special trip to the bank to get the funds to pay the court within its time limit.

Far from being in contempt this defendant went out of his way to comply with the letter of the court's ruling in the case.

If the court objects to the manner of payment, in the form of pennies, one might ask if the fine had been $56.12, might the court had accepted two pennies to make up the 12 cents. If so, would the court have accepted all 12 cents to be in pennies? What if it were 96 cents? At what point can the judge decide that payment in legal tender using any element of US currency as payment becomes contempt?

For instance, if the fine had been $8,000 and the defendant timely paid the fine, but in $1 dollar bills, is that defendant in contempt? There is no rule that the defendant must pay a fine in a manner that is most convenient for the court. The only rule is that the defendant must timely pay the fine buy the means acceptable to the court, cash, credit or by check, and if by credit or check that both payments be good and not rejected.

By determining the payment of the fine was in contempt because of the use of US 1 cent coins as the method of payment, the court has exercised its power in an arbitrary and capricious manner with no foundation in law or fact.

 

[WillowTree]

May it please the court:

I draw your attention to the second part of the statement above "Disobedience of a court's prior order." In the instant case, there was not "disobedience" to the court's prior order to pay a fine of $56 dollars. In fact, the evidence is that he paid the $56 with legal tender of the United States within the time specified by the court. Additionally, the evidence is that the defendant made a special trip to the bank to get the funds to pay the court within its time limit.

Far from being in contempt this defendant went out of his way to comply with the letter of the court's ruling in the case.

If the court objects to the manner of payment, in the form of pennies, one might ask if the fine had been $56.12, might the court had accepted two pennies to make up the 12 cents. If so, would the court have accepted all 12 cents to be in pennies? What if it were 96 cents? At what point can the judge decide that payment in legal tender using any element of US currency as payment becomes contempt?

For instance, if the fine had been $8,000 and the defendant timely paid the fine, but in $1 dollar bills, is that defendant in contempt? There is no rule that the defendant must pay a fine in a manner that is most convenient for the court. The only rule is that the defendant must timely pay the fine buy the means acceptable to the court, cash, credit or by check, and if by credit or check that both payments be good and not rejected.

By determining the payment of the fine was in contempt because of the use of US 1 cent coins as the method of payment, the court has exercised its power in an arbitrary and capricious manner with no foundation in law or fact.

you are such a smart ass, now my Christmas wish for you is that if you get an income tax refund you get it all in pennies.. and that goes for the rest of you smart asses too!

 

[Ravi]

May it please the court:

I draw your attention to the second part of the statement above "Disobedience of a court's prior order." In the instant case, there was not "disobedience" to the court's prior order to pay a fine of $56 dollars. In fact, the evidence is that he paid the $56 with legal tender of the United States within the time specified by the court. Additionally, the evidence is that the defendant made a special trip to the bank to get the funds to pay the court within its time limit.

Far from being in contempt this defendant went out of his way to comply with the letter of the court's ruling in the case.

If the court objects to the manner of payment, in the form of pennies, one might ask if the fine had been $56.12, might the court had accepted two pennies to make up the 12 cents. If so, would the court have accepted all 12 cents to be in pennies? What if it were 96 cents? At what point can the judge decide that payment in legal tender using any element of US currency as payment becomes contempt?

For instance, if the fine had been $8,000 and the defendant timely paid the fine, but in $1 dollar bills, is that defendant in contempt? There is no rule that the defendant must pay a fine in a manner that is most convenient for the court. The only rule is that the defendant must timely pay the fine buy the means acceptable to the court, cash, credit or by check, and if by credit or check that both payments be good and not rejected.

By determining the payment of the fine was in contempt because of the use of US 1 cent coins as the method of payment, the court has exercised its power in an arbitrary and capricious manner with no foundation in law or fact.

If the sign that said the court accepted legal tender as payment didn't exist the Judge would have been correct according to the Snopes article.

 

[Shogun]

those are awfully pretty words, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, but the opposite is as evident as the legal prerogative of the court to decline payment by use of a particular coin. Not only did the defendant make the extra effort to acquire pennies for this malicious purpose, while a myriad of other options were readily available, but he did so out of spite towards the very judicial system which provided him a mere fine instead of, say, a month in jail for his original traffic offenses. Indeed, it's this very evident spite which caused him to, Not go home and collect what funds he was able to scrape together - which just happened to be pennies, but instead walk up to a teller and REQUEST pounds and pounds of our most tediously counted, one hundreth of a dollar change for the SOLE purpose of making a passive-aggressive lunge towards extracting contemptuous revenge against the judge that signed the verdict and the very court system that found him originally guilty of a traffic crime. Ladies and gentlemen, what would come to be of our justice system if every angry citizen charged, and found guilty, of a crime were allowed to mire the court in like fashion for the sake of satisfying their urge for revenge against the court? It is for these reasons that you must find the defendant guilty of the charge of Contempt of Court. While the defendant is capable of requesting a whole range of payment methods from his bank, from money order to check, and instead chooses the lowest, most spiteful in order to bring his dept to society in line with sentencing, we must hold him accountable for THIS slight of the law every bit as much as we would any other criminal tresspass on our laws and disregard for our legal system.

Thank you.

 

[Paulie]

you are such a smart ass, now my Christmas wish for you is that if you get an income tax refund you get it all in pennies.. and that goes for the rest of you smart asses too!

If I received pennies, so be it.

I'll deposit them in my bank account and continue on with my life. No harm done.

I'll even seperate the pre-1982's if there are any, and take the profit from the copper content value. I'll most likely MAKE money in the end.

And as far as that snopes link, it only mentions private merchants as having the freedom to accept whatever form of payment they desire, but they're required to disclose that before a transaction takes place.

A court is not a private merchant. So I'm inclined to think they don't have that same option, as they're a part of the government. If they do have that option though, they're required to make that policy publicly available before a transaction. As in, a nice big sign stating what is acceptable payment.

So the question is, did this particular court have a specific policy of no pennies for payment? That seems to be the only thing that's important here.

 

[PoliticalChic]

May it please the court:

I draw your attention to the second part of the statement above "Disobedience of a court's prior order." In the instant case, there was not "disobedience" to the court's prior order to pay a fine of $56 dollars. In fact, the evidence is that he paid the $56 with legal tender of the United States within the time specified by the court. Additionally, the evidence is that the defendant made a special trip to the bank to get the funds to pay the court within its time limit.

Far from being in contempt this defendant went out of his way to comply with the letter of the court's ruling in the case.

If the court objects to the manner of payment, in the form of pennies, one might ask if the fine had been $56.12, might the court had accepted two pennies to make up the 12 cents. If so, would the court have accepted all 12 cents to be in pennies? What if it were 96 cents? At what point can the judge decide that payment in legal tender using any element of US currency as payment becomes contempt?

For instance, if the fine had been $8,000 and the defendant timely paid the fine, but in $1 dollar bills, is that defendant in contempt? There is no rule that the defendant must pay a fine in a manner that is most convenient for the court. The only rule is that the defendant must timely pay the fine buy the means acceptable to the court, cash, credit or by check, and if by credit or check that both payments be good and not rejected.

By determining the payment of the fine was in contempt because of the use of US 1 cent coins as the method of payment, the court has exercised its power in an arbitrary and capricious manner with no foundation in law or fact.

Yes, the law doesn't specify that he did anything wrong.

 

[Paulie]

Yes, the law doesn't specify that he did anything wrong.

Other than inconvenience a court clerk who was probably SOOOOO busy doing something else.

That seems to be enough to justify an arrest warrant to some people here.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Other than inconvenience a court clerk who was probably SOOOOO busy doing something else.

That seems to be enough to justify an arrest warrant to some people here.

I can't wait to hear the outcome.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

If the sign that said the court accepted legal tender as payment didn't exist the Judge would have been correct according to the Snopes article.

I tend to agree. The accepted methods listed included cash. Pennies are cash. I do not disagree that the clerk or Government can specify ahead of time what is acceptable payment. In this case they posted what was acceptable and he provided it in the acceptable form.

 

[Paulie]

If you don't want pennies, you have to specify that. Simple as that.

 

[ABikerSailor]

Hey.....payment is payment.......regardless if it is convenient to you or not, it still fills the requirements.

You think it's any easier to let go of cash? ESPECIALLY in this economy.

 

[Paulie]

I don't know, you could actually make a profit from taking paper to the bank and getting coins. You might find pre-65 silver, or pre-82 copper.

In the end, you still have the same amount of face-value cash PLUS the value of the metal content.

win-win.

But like I said earlier, counting coins "sucks", so....

 

[driveby]

Puleeze...it wasn't even treason to lie to get us into Iraq. Tone down the rhetoric. If a judge issues an order and someone violates it, they can be held in contempt.

speaking of rhetoric........

 

[SpidermanTuba]

This tells us do not expect the government to take it's own pennies as payment.

??? Huh? If a small town in New Jersey is actually minting its own pennies, as you suggest, we've got another problem.