Mr. Ticket : Attorney Takes on Nuts-and-Bolts Traffic Cases That Others Spurn and Does It at Bargain Prices

Mitchell J. Mehdy knows many lawyers who dream of landing that one, big high-profile case--a juicy murder trial, or maybe a poignant malpractice suit--that will fatten their bank accounts and bolster their reputations as brilliant litigators.

Mehdy sets his sights lower: speeding tickets, moving violations. The more low-profile cases, he says, the better.

The 36-year-old attorney, who calls himself Mr. Ticket, prides himself on maintaining a caseload that is 90% traffic-related. In four years of practice, he estimates he’s taken 10,000 tickets to court--1,000 of those to trial.

The pace is relentless. The pay per case is a pittance--Mehdy charges most clients less than $100. But Mehdy, the only attorney in the San Diego County telephone book with “Traffic Tickets Only” under his name, loves his work.

It may not be glamorous, but in this car-centered Southern California culture, he believes his is an important job.

“I don’t have somebody’s life in my hands,” Mehdy said as he paused briefly between trials recently. “But I’ve got something as important: their transportation. . . . And nobody can touch my prices!”

Indeed, because Mehdy juggles such a huge volume of cases, he says he can afford to defend a traffic client for a fraction of what other lawyers would charge.

And traffic court veterans say that, especially under new state budget-balancing laws, which pushed ticket fees and fines up 15% to 25%, Mehdy’s services are becoming a better and better buy.

“In the past, it hasn’t necessarily been worthwhile to hire a lawyer. But now you’re talking about much larger fines, points on your record, possibly losing your license and then maybe your job,” said Commissioner Daniel M. Ornelas, who presides over traffic cases in North County Municipal Court in San Marcos. Mehdy “knows the quirks of the various courts. He knows where he can get a benefit for his clients.”

Mehdy’s is an unusual specialty. Although many lawyers make a living trying drunk-driving cases, few choose to argue the subtleties of U-turns and speed traps, as Mehdy does.

State Bar officials say that, although past specialization surveys have not been specific enough to measure how many Mr. Tickets exist statewide, they suspect there aren’t many.

“It’s going to be very, very rare,” said Mark Mazzarella, the vice chairman of the State Bar Assn. Litigation Section Executive Committee. “I certainly know of no one else.”

In San Diego County, Mehdy’s colleagues say he is one of a kind.

“He has found himself a niche that most lawyers wouldn’t do because of the frantic pace and the low rewards,” said James M. Bishop, a criminal defense lawyer and former San Diego city attorney who used to prosecute Mehdy’s clients.

“He’s someone that slugs it out in the trenches for the common man, for someone who can’t afford the $1,000 (others lawyers might charge) to handle a traffic ticket.”

Mehdy didn’t set out to be the Perry Mason of traffic court. After he got his law degree from McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento in 1984, he wanted to be a tax attorney.

He got a second degree in tax law from University of San Diego Law School and worked for several months in an accounting firm. He hated it.

“I never got to go in the courtroom. I got frustrated stuck in the office,” he said. In law school, he said, he had loved volunteering in a small claims legal clinic, helping solve real people’s problems.

Driven by that memory, he decided to master the area of law that affects more people than any other: traffic.

“This is the no-respect field of law. Nobody in town wants to take lip and run to court five times for $75,” Mehdy said after he completed eight trials one day recently. “But I get as much out of this as (the clients) do. It’s the most dynamic trial experience anybody could ever have.”

“I think he just thrives on it--being the underdog,” said one client, a San Diego secretary who asked that her name not be used.

She was so grateful after Mehdy won her a lighter sentence for her drunk-driving conviction that she gave him a weekend in Palm Springs as well as his fee. (He hasn’t taken the trip yet. He says he’s too busy.)

“I compare him to the person that you see in the movies who gets paid in chickens instead of money. He feels like, ‘If I don’t help these people, who will?’ ” she said. “Whether he’s making a million bucks or not, he must have the self-satisfaction of knowing he’s the best.”

Mehdy lives modestly with his wife and daughter in half a duplex in Encinitas. Instead of tasseled loafers, Mehdy wears soft-soled Hushpuppies--they last longer, he says. On a recent afternoon, the elbow of his dress shirt was peeking through a tear in his coat.

Mehdy drives a 3-year-old Honda whose odometer recently topped 116,000 miles. The reason: on an average day, he visits all four of the county’s judicial districts, driving more than 100 miles to settle, arraign, continue or try about 150 cases.

Then, after eight hours in court, he usually schedules evening office visits--from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., so clients can come by after work.

After that, there’s always filing to do (to manage hundreds of cases at once, Mehdy has developed a color-coded, computerized scheduling system that takes hours to maintain).

While other lawyers demand fees be paid up front, Mehdy has been known to let clients make monthly payments. He adjusts his rates based on ability to pay. Last year, he says, he billed about $200,000, but only collected half of that. He says he writes off about 40% of the hours he bills each year.

“I think about the big money. I’m a human being. I look at my other friends driving their Mercedeses and going home to their wives at 5 o’clock at night. . . . I do undercharge,” said Mehdy, who rarely sees his own wife before 10 p.m. “But, if I raise my rates, it will limit accessibility to me. You think the common guy can afford $200 or $300?”

Mehdy says his clients are a varied bunch: a welfare mother, a millionaire, an elderly widow and more than one member of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang (“Every time they drive down the street, they get a ticket,” he says).

What they have in common is their wheeled encounters with the law and, in many cases, their desperation.

Many of Mehdy’s clients come to him with everything to lose--maybe their driver’s license is about to be taken away, or they are facing jail-time for driving with a suspended license.

“The people I deal with are sometimes the fringe,” he says. “But, if you get a traffic ticket and you’re poor, you don’t get a public defender. I want to give working people an equal chance. Everybody’s entitled to a defense.”

Besides, Mehdy says, he relishes his clients’ stories. And, when it comes to excuses, he’s heard them all. One man blamed his speeding ticket on a pet snake that escaped from its cage and was slithering around the car when an officer pulled the man over. Mehdy took the case to trial, he says, and got the ticket dismissed.

Another man told the traffic officer that he was rushing home to his wife, who was about to have a baby. The officer followed him home and found no wife in sight. Mehdy concedes that, when that came out in court, there was little he could do to prevent a conviction. Still, he argues, the client got more than his money’s worth.

The key, Mehdy says, is delay. Most people’s insurance policies come up for renewal mid-year. So, Mehdy reasons, if you get a ticket in April, and he gets it continued until September, it is unlikely your insurance company will find out and raise your rates until you renew again in December. Depending on the infraction, that can translate into a big savings.

And that’s just if you lose. Ponder this: Mehdy says about 25% of his traffic citation cases are dismissed because the traffic officer doesn’t show up to testify.

The longer he delays a case, he says, the greater the chance that the officer will be absent. So no matter how guilty you are, Mehdy can offer about one in four odds that your ticket will be erased.

He tries to increase those odds with a little common sense. Whenever possible, he schedules trials for Monday or Friday mornings--the times that experience has shown him officers are least likely to appear. The days before holidays also offer optimal trial conditions.

“The day before Christmas or New Year’s--any major holiday. I’ve always been lucky on those days,” he said.

But it’s not all in the timing. By all accounts, Mehdy has a superior command of the state Vehicle Code, a tattered copy of which he carries with him like a Bible.

“He’s very knowledgeable in the law, more so than a lot of attorneys,” said Norman Pokorny, the senior trial setting deputy for the San Diego city attorney’s office with whom Mehdy plea bargains on a daily basis. “He’s fair . . . and he gives me a run for my money.”

That expertise can also save his clients from expensive mistakes. You may not think it’s a big deal to plead guilty to something like not wearing a seat belt. But, in many cases, your insurance company will. These are the kinds of things Mehdy tries to get dismissed.

“An open container in a vehicle doesn’t appear to be anything, but your insurance company may consider it to be as bad as a drunk-driving conviction,” said Commissioner Craig Woll, who sits in El Cajon Municipal Court. “But you don’t know that for a year or more down the road. . . . Quite frankly, if people are paying (Mehdy) a reasonable sum, they’re usually saving money in the long run. And getting a better deal.”

And then there are the technical arguments. In every trial, for example, Mehdy asks the traffic officer if he has refreshed his memory with notes about the incident.

Since the average officer has written 500 tickets since the ticket in question, they always say yes, and Mehdy always asks to see the notes.

“I just won a case because the officer forgot to bring notes to court,” Mehdy said proudly. “The person was dead-out guilty: 75 miles-an-hour in a 55 zone. . . . You’ve got to take advantage of everything you can.”

Will Mr. Ticket ever move on to other things? Mr. Personal Injury maybe? Or Mr. Divorce?

“When I can’t learn anything, and I can’t help anybody, I’ll move on,” Mehdy said. “Another 15,000 cases, maybe.”