Anyone who has ever tried to find appellate case law on traffic infractions will quickly realize that few traffic infraction cases are appealed to the Court of Appeals and even fewer to the Washington Supreme Court.  The attorney fees alone would be significantly more than the initial ticket. 

Such was not the case for Seattle attorney Andy Magee.  In 2005, Mr. Magee helped out a friend who needed a jump start on an on-ramp on Highway 520 and positioned his vehicle so that it was nose-to-nose with the other car on the shoulder.  Mr. Magee was given a ticket for Negligent Driving the Second Degree – a moving violation found at RCW 46.61.525.   IRLJ 2.2(b)(1) notes that “[t]he infraction need not have been committed in the officers presence, except as provided by statute”.  The statute in question is RCW 46.63.030  – it gives reasons when a law enforcement officer has the authority to issue a notice of traffic infraction: “If an officer investigating at the scene of a motor vehicle accident has reasonable cause to believe that the driver of a motor vehicle involved in the accident has committed a traffic infraction”.

Mr. Magee argued that because the trooper had not witnessed the alleged violation (driving the wrong way on the highway) he should not have been given the ticket.  He was unsuccessful at his hearing in District Court.  The judgment was confirmed on RALJ appeal in Pierce County Superior Court.  The Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment as well (143 Wn. App. 698 – look on www.legalwa.org for the opinion). 

On December 3, 2009,  Supreme Court ruled that, because negligent driving is a moving infraction and Magee’s driving happened before the trooper arrived, ”the trooper did not have authority to issue the notice of infraction”. 

 The unanimous  opinion is available at the Washington Court’s website for the next 90 days.  After that time, it will be available only on the www.legalwa.org website.

For further research on this topic, there is the two-volume set  Washington Criminal Practice in Courts of Limited Jurisdiction by Linda Portnoy (available at the reference desk).  Also, the briefs from the Supreme Court case are available here.