March 2000

Letters

Mitigated Hearing Best Ticket to Keeping Vehicle

Editor:
I am writing to correct some misconceptions and inaccuracies in your January article on the new DWLS towing law, "Criminal Lawyers: You Have to Love Them!" [President's Corner, January 2000, p. 15].

Your friend stated a fairly accurate figure that approximately 40 percent of misdemeanor cases are for DWLS (driving while license suspended). What he failed to mention is that these same drivers cause about 60 percent of the car accidents and have no insurance to pay for them.

Washington is new to the DWLS towing law but other states are not. San Diego experienced a 75 percent decrease in hit-and-run fatality accidents during their first year of towing for DWLS. Anchorage only tows DUI vehicles but has found that one-third of the drivers stopped for DUI also have a suspended license. In Kennewick, we began towing on February 8, 1999, and have experienced a 16 percent decrease in DWLS cases and a 14 percent decrease in all misdemeanor crime.

In Kennewick, if you fail to pay your traffic infractions and are suspended in the third degree, a first-time offender may recover the vehicle immediately upon paying the outstanding fines that caused the suspension. Repeat offenders must wait 30 days to recover their vehicle. A vehicle can only be impounded for 90 days if the driver is suspended in the first or second degree and is a repeat offender. Persons suspended in the first or second degree are usually suspended because of a DUI or in the interest of safety because they have too many driving offenses within the preceding year. Kennewick's ordinance also allows for early release of a vehicle based on personal or economic hardship. Under this section, a spouse or owner (who was not the driver) can request a hearing for early release of his vehicle. The hearing is held within a couple of days to reduce the hardship and generally our judiciary has been very lenient in releasing vehicles due to hardship.

My suggestion to your friend is that the next time he gets a speeding ticket, check the little box on the back requesting a mitigated hearing. The judge will probably reduce the ticket to a fraction of the face amount and allow your friend to make time payments of about $25 a month. This way he can keep his license, his insurance coverage, and his vehicle.

Editor:
Yikes! In her article about the future of the legal profession, Jan Michels wrote that, "Lawyers must move towards a 24x7 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) presence and availability."

I hope not. Instead, I hope that we and our clients will be encouraging a reasonableness in what we ask of each other. My home phone number is still listed. Fortunately, after 27 years, I can report that clients use it infrequently and rarely abuse it.

While I like being a lawyer, it does not constitute the meaning of life for me. It is not the most important thing in my life.

While the pressures of today's practice make it difficult for any of us to get and maintain a life, I refuse to give up on the effort. The proposal that we seek to create a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week presence seems to me to encourage the wrong directions for our lives. This particular proposed accommodation to the "swiftly changing norms of this new information age" is one that I respectfully decline. The e-mail will still be there in the morning.

Editor:
I opened my January 2000 Bar News, and as always, read it cover to cover. (Truly, I always do.) I was struck by your mastery of the use of irony in laying out the content.

I read on page 18 that change is not a choice and that, "Lawyers must move toward 24x7 presence and availability. They must develop a sense of urgency," with which I fully agree. I then turn the page, and at the top of page 21 I read, "But being admitted to the bar does not absolve a lawyer of his responsibilities outside of work…. [H]e must meet those responsibilities, which means he must lead a balanced life."

Which do you want us to follow? The 24 hour, 7-day availability, or the take-some-time-to-smell-the-roses paradigm? I'm sorry folks, I can't do both. Maybe the solution is to be available to clients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but only bill them from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.?

I do appreciate the irony.

Editor:
It is a sad day for the Washington State Bar Association when the president proposes creating a new position on the governing board from which I am excluded solely by my race, and it is a sad day for this nation when we use the concept of "diversity" to select individuals based upon their race alone. The people who engage in this practice of institutionalizing racism are the same ones who bellow the loudest when it results in deteriorating race relations.

I realize that the concept is a backward one and I will never receive any awards for it, but please excuse me while I go back to treating people of all races equally.

It is not just time, it's past time! I strongly endorse President Eymann's proposal to add a young lawyer and a minority lawyer to the Board of Governors.

Carleton B. Waldrop
Pullman

Readers are invited to submit letters of reasonable length to the editor. They may be sent via e-mail to comm@wsba.org or provided on disk in any conventional format with accompanying hard copy. Due date is the 10th of the month for the second issue following, e.g., March 10 for the May issue. The editor reserves the right to select excerpts for publication or edit them as appropriate. Signatures in excess of three names will be printed at the discretion of the editor.

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