Chicago DUI lawyer says, "yes you can get your license suspended for an unpaid ticket".

This Chicago DUI lawyer has posted here, here, and here about suspended drivers' licenses. Now comes the news, at least for some, that there isn't a Statute of Limitations on money owed to the government for old tickets.

November 14, San Diego, CA

Yasmen Abdallah-Fliers said she doesn't remember getting a speeding ticket in Illinois in 1982 for going 43 mph in a 35 mph zone. Nor does she remember failing to pay the $59 fine.

But, 27 years later, California found out about it and yanked the Vista resident's driving privileges until she cleared up the decades-old infraction.

"I mean, this is unbelievable to me," Abdallah-Fliers said Monday. "We need people to know what the consequences are if you have an out-of-state ticket."

Michael Marando, a spokesman for the California Department of Motor Vehicles, said the state is a member of a network that links it to DMVs in other states. When a driver goes to renew a license, as Abdallah-Fliers did, little viral spies go searching for motor mistakes made not only in California, but in other states, and they send up red flags that can keep a person from getting a California driver's license.

Abdallah-Fliers, a registered nurse with two kids, got caught in the net ---- and had her license suspended for an unpaid ticket. She just found out last weekend, courtesy of a letter from the California DMV.

Why, she wanted to know, was her driver's license held hostage over a nearly three-decade-old traffic infraction so minor she still doesn't remember it.

"There is a statute of limitations on rape, but where is the statute of limitations on tickets?" Adballah-Fliers said.

Just because you haven't paid an old ticket doesn't mean the bill goes a way. She's fortunate that it hadn't doubled based on a penalty. Now imagine how unfortunate she could have been if she had been charged with a DUI. She would be looking at a felony DUI, assuming she is a first time offender, solely because her license was suspended based on this twenty-seven year old ticket. Now that doesn't seem fair to me, but what's fair got to do with owing money to the government?