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Cost of legal battle to overturn speeding fine hits £20k
A WOMAN who has spent £20,000 on her bid to overturn a £100 speeding fine could take her fight to the European Court of Human Rights.
Vikki Fielden has fought to prove the speed camera that snapped her going at 36mph on a road outside Huddersfield was inaccurate.
Her husband, Dr Iain Fielden, who is a physicist at Sheffield Hallam University, argued the GATSO camera had not been installed in line with the manufacturers' instructions and was liable to give a wrong reading if the road was curved or if his wife's car had deviated from a straight line.
Mrs Fielden, of Shirecliffe Road, Sheffield, was convicted at Huddersfield Magistrates' Court in August 2007 after her VW Polo, in which her husband was a passenger, was photographed on the A619 at Brockholes, West Yorkshire.
She appealed to the Crown Court where her case was dismissed in December the same year.
On top of the 100 speeding fine, she was hit with a prosecution legal costs bill for 15,000.
Mrs Fielden's legal team headed to the High Court in London today in a bid to persuade top judges she has an arguable case that she was wrongly found guilty.
Her barrister, Michael Shrimpton, argued the "burden of proof" had been unfairly reversed against Mrs Fielden - so she was required to prove the camera was inaccurate - and the entire prosecution amounted to an "abuse of process".
He told the judges the inaccuracy of the camera meant Mrs Fielden, 51, could have been going at just 34 mph and it was the Government's "published policy" that drivers going at up to 35mph in a 30 mph zone are never prosecuted.
But Mr Justice Maddison ruled any appeal against the Crown Court's decision was "doomed to fail", and told the court: "Mrs Fielden was rightly convicted on the clearest of evidence".
After the court's decision, Mr Shrimpton told the judges Mrs Fielden would now be "proceeding straight to Strasbourg", the home of the European Court of Human Rights.
Outside court, Dr Fielden, 43, estimated that, on top of the 15,000 costs bill, his wife now also faces paying around 5,000 more to cover the fees of her own legal team and they could very well take their case all the way to Europe.
"The costs are just ridiculous," he said. "15,000 is really an abstract figure, it's so big."
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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