Suit seeks compensation over suspended licenses

Tue., June 8, 2004

Associated Press

OLYMPIA — Even as state lawyers and officials puzzle over a Washington Supreme Court ruling that drastically reduced the state’s power to suspend drivers’ licenses, a federal lawsuit seeks compensation for hundreds of thousands of people who lost the right to drive in recent years.

The Department of Licensing has stopped issuing the notices of suspension to people who fail to pay or otherwise respond to a traffic citation, said Brad Benfield, a department spokesman. Last week, the high court said such suspensions are unconstitutional because the drivers haven’t been accorded due process. The department is awaiting guidance from Attorney General Christine Gregoire’s office about exactly what the ruling means, Benfield said.

“The issues here are complex,” he said. “The effects could be far-reaching.”

Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle seeks to force the state to refund the $33 that hundreds of thousands of drivers have been charged to get new licenses after a suspension.

“We want more than just their money back, we want to take it off their driving record,” said Steve Berman, a Seattle attorney who specializes in class action lawsuits. “There are certain things under the law that rise to such a level that you can’t take them away without due process of law.”

The class could theoretically include more than a million people, Berman said.

Benfield said state officials hadn’t had a chance to review the lawsuit and couldn’t comment on it.

The high court ruled in the case of two Redmond men arrested for driving while their licenses were suspended. It tossed out both the law that required that licenses be suspended for failing to pay a traffic fine and a separate law that allowed the department to suspend the licenses by mailing out a notice and then waiting 30 days.

Local courts have already begun responding to the ruling. On Friday, Clark County Superior Court John Wulle issued an emergency order giving Sheriff Garry Lucas authority to review 95 cases involving the invalidated laws.

Deputy Prosecutor Curt Wyrick said the county will free inmates jailed solely for second- and third-degree driving while suspended, and ordered all Clark County law enforcement agencies not to make arrests for those offenses.

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