Red Light tickets -- may be worth fighting

Not my area of law, but certainly of interest to those of us who drive cars... An Orange County Appellate court has ruled inadmissible the photographs taken by a red light camera, and dismissed the citation against the driver who took the case up on appeal.

So, if you have a red light ticket, it's probably worth fighting in Court until the procedures by which the tickets are proven in court change.

The specific issue in the appellate case was the testifying officer's lack of personal knowledge of how the photograph was taken, how it was kept, and, at its most basic level, whether it actually represented what was claimed by the prosecution. Typically in a lawsuit involving photographs, the photographer testifies as to the authenticity of the photograph from his personal knowledge. In the red light traffic ticket, a computer takes the photo, not a person, and the computer can't be called to testify. The appellate court decided that a police officer's testimony (who wasn't employed by the company that operated the camera) wasn't good enough either.