A Nassau County Supreme Court judge has ruled the county does not have to repay the $100 red light camera fees it has illegally charged millions of drivers since 2009.
Judge Thomas Rademaker ruled earlier this month that the county is not required to pay back those fees because even though the estimated $400 million in fees was collected illegally, drivers paid them “voluntarily.”
Since 2009, Nassau has been charging drivers a $100 “driver responsibility” fine on top of the normal $50 red light camera fine. In November, after a 10-year lawsuit, an appellate court ruled that the additional fee was illegal. The county stopped charging it days later.
David Raimondo, the attorney leading the lawsuit against the county, called Rademaker’s October decision “radical,” and said he would be appealing it to the higher appellate court for the third time.
The appellate court has already ruled in Raimondo’s favor twice before.
Nassau County declined to comment on the case.
Raimondo said he called the decision “radical” because it suggested that to contest an illegal fee, those impacted would have had to protest paying it, an action he said has penal consequences.
“Judge Rademacher issued a radical decision and ruled, despite Nassau County’s illegality, its citizens paid voluntarily,” Raimondo said. “The judge ignored the express threats of license and registration revocation, booting and towing of one’s vehicle and a legal judgment in the County Clerk’s Office, which gets put on a credit report [if the fee was not paid].”
“There was no ability to contest any administrative fee,” the attorney continued. “Despite the higher court’s ruling that the fees were illegal and unconstitutional, this judge ruled they were paid voluntarily.”
Raimondo said the appellate division has “scoffed at the idea that hundreds of thousands of citizens would have to protest somewhere when paying by credit card and file hundreds of thousands of notices of claims against Nassau County.”
He said he believed the judge was “biased” toward the county and ruled this way to protect it because the county wanted to delay being ordered to pay the fees back before the November election. He said he would be requesting that Rademaker be removed from the case if it is brought back before the Nassau County Supreme Court.
“In my opinion, the government acts together to acquit itself…The judge in this case, in my opinion, violated some basic principles,” Raimondo said. “Nassau County has achieved what it wanted to do, which was kicking the can down the road until after the election.”
Raimondo said he believed Nassau’s decision not to repay the fees now was “financially irresponsible” for the county, as the $400 million in illegally collected fees will continue to accrue interest at 9% until the next ruling, which may not come for multiple years.
Raimondo pointed to Suffolk County, which had a similar illegal red light camera fee program and has begun negotiating with plaintiffs over repayment of the fees it collected in its own, separate case.
The case has been dismissed in Nassau County Supreme Court. It is back in the appellate division court, and reaching a decision could take years.
