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Notes From Our Legal Advisory Department

Fines: Since fines are subject to a surcharge in Ontario, tickets made out by police officers are required to have both amounts.

Trial dates: If you receive a yellow offence notice, you have within 15 days to request a trial date with a set fine. If no fine is shown, then it should set out a court appearance date.

Demerit points: How many demerit points will you get for certain infractions? Novice drivers (G1 and G2) are suspended from driving for 60 days when reaching nine demerit points. Fully licensed drivers are suspended for a period of 30 days when they accumulate 15 or more points.

Serious driving offences: Careless driving, driving under suspension, failing to remain at the scene and all Criminal Code charges (e.g., impaired driving) are serious offences and will almost always result in a person being put in a facility rate for the highest possible insurance premiums. Before making your plea, you should seek proper legal advice.

Infractions while out of the province or in the US: New York and Michigan are the only US states that have an agreement with Ontario for the assessment of demerit points and convictions. All provinces also have an agreement with Ontario for convictions and demerit points. If you receive a driving infraction in New York, Michigan or any Canadian province, your insurance company will be notified. However, they will not hear about infractions received in jurisdictions that are not mentioned above.

Auto insurance coverage: If your son, daughter or other family member covered to drive the family car? Unless any specific person is excluded in writing from the insurance policy, all individuals who are legally licensed are automatically covered by the owner's policy anywhere in Canada and the US. Remember auto insurance policies are not valid in Mexico or anywhere else outside Canada and the US.

Accident reporting: On reporting accidents, the law requires that all accidents where there is personal injury must be reported immediately (not the next day or week). This means as soon as somebody can get to a telephone. There is one exception: if a police officer requires that a motorist report the accident to a collision reporting centre, then by custom you are given 24 hours to report it. Where there is property damage only (meaning the total amount to all vehicles involved), a report is required when it appears that the dollar value of the damage exceeds $1,000.

Renting a vehicle: In Canada, all rental cars have liability insurance (usually one million dollars). This type of insurance comes with the car. Please note that in California, many car rental companies do not have liability insurance, so you must purchase this insurance. In order to protect yourself from responsibility for the rental car itself, you must either purchase the rental agency's collision damage waiver, have your own car insurance that covers a rental car, or have a "gold" type credit card that covers the rental company's CDW.

Small claims: In small claims proceedings, if you are being sued, you must respond to the writ within 20 days; otherwise, a judgment will be entered against you. If you wants to sue someone, a fee must be paid in advance (usually $75), and your statement of claim must be in writing and filed with the appropriate court. You should contact your local court for further information.