Legal Question in Traffic Law in Virginia

My son worked for a pest control company in Virginia. He drove their trucks to go to the residential homes to treat for pests. He was an hourly employee. While en route in one of the company trucks to treat a residential home, he was stopped by a police officer for an expired tag. My son had never been stopped by the police before and he tried to explain the vehicle was a company truck and he did not have control over the tags. The police officer gave my son a ticket for driving on an expired tag. He notified the foreman of the company who told my son that it was basically my son's problem and that he could go to court and show they had renewed the tag....late and

"the judge would let him off". Well longer story short, I disagreed with this response by the foreman and my son went to the owner of the company who took the ticket from my son and assured him he would take care of this. He did not. My son was tried in Absentia and found guilty of this. Even though it was a company truck. My son assumed the owner had showed up and paid the ticket or gone to court. Now, we found out by looking at the Virginia Court Case Information site that it was NOT paid and no one showed. I had to pay out the fees and fines in order to avoid my son's license from being suspended. And it is also now on my son's record on top of it. What is our recourse if any? Can this be removed from the records? What laws protect employees from this type of behavior by company owners?


Asked on 11/17/16, 7:16 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Michael Hendrickson Law Office Michael E. Hendrickson

No recourse, unfortunately, (in my opinion) for the scenario described since your son was the one whose name was on this ticket as the defendant and not the company nor its owner nor anyone else.

Rather than relying on the assurances of this owner, the prudent course

for your son would've been for him to call the traffic branch of the civil division

of the general district court a day or two before the court date to determine

whether the matter had in fact been taken care of as promised by the owner and then

to appear in court when he learned that it had not and explain it all to the judge.

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Answered on 12/09/16, 8:03 am


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