Speeding fine couple face £20k in legal costs

Jul 4 2009 Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Dr Iain Fielden, 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.

But Mrs Fielden was convicted by Huddersfield Magistrates’ in August 2007.

The case was dismissed at Bradford Crown Court in December 2007 when, in addition to the £100 speeding fine, she was ordered to pay the prosecution bill of £15,000.

Yesterday her legal team headed by barrister Michael Shrimpton took the case to the High Court in a bid to persuade two top judges that she was wrongly found guilty.

Dr Fielden added: “It [the cost] is a concern but the figure is abstract, it was a number pulled from somewhere.

“It is the system that really makes my blood boil.”

Mr Justice Maddison ruled that any appeal against the Crown Court’s decision was “doomed to fail” and told the court: “Mr Fielden was rightly convicted on the clearest of evidence”.

The judge, sitting with Lord Justice Richards, accepted that “at first blush” the £15,000 costs order seemed “disproportionate” to the £100 fine, but told the court: “A simple case had been made exceedingly and unnecessarily complex.”