Speeding fine couple face £20k in legal costs

Jul 4 2009 Huddersfield Daily Examiner

A COUPLE who spent two years and £20,000 fighting a speeding fine say they may take the case to European courts.

Vikki Fielden received a £60 fixed penalty notice after she was clocked by a camera driving at 36mph in a 30mph zone at New Mill Road in Brockholes on June 4, 2006.

Since then the 52-year-old and husband Iain Fielden, a physicist, have taken the case from magistrates’ to crown court and yesterday to the High Court in London.

But after yesterday’s hearing in which a judge said they had made the case “exceedingly and unnecessarily complex” the couple say they will consider their next step – which would be the European Court of Human Rights.

Dr Fielden said: “It is not definite but we are thinking about it – it is not a decision to make in the heat of the moment.

“What happened was, in our barrister’s words and with respect to the court, a gross miscarriage of justice.”

When asked how far the couple would take the case, Dr Fielden replied: “We are both stubborn people, I am a scientist and scientists can be extremely stubborn.

“My wife’s father marched with Martin Luther King and some of that determination rubbed off on her.

“It’s not about a speeding fine anymore, it hasn’t been about a speeding fine for two years.

“It’s about what people can get away with in court.”

Mrs Fielden was given a £100 speeding fine by magistrates after being caught on the speed camera.

They have fought to prove the speed camera that snapped her VW Polo on a Brockholes road was inaccurate.