Call Him Mr. Ticket : San Diego Lawyer Specializes in Low-Profile Traffic Cases

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, on speeding tickets and moving violations. The more low-profile the 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.

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

“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 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--in addition to his fee--she is paying for him to take a weekend holiday in Palm Springs. (He hasn’t taken the trip yet. He says he’s too busy.)

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

Mehdy drives a 3-year-old Honda whose odometer recently topped 116,000 miles. 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 cases.

Then, after eight hours in court, Mehdy usually schedules office visits from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., so his clients can come by after work. After that, Mehdy always has filing to do. (To manage hundreds of cases at once, he has developed a color-coded, computerized scheduling system that takes hours to maintain).

While other lawyers demand that 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 five 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).

Mehdy says he relishes his clients’ stories. 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 admits that when that came out in court, there was little he could do to prevent a conviction.

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 approximately 1-in-4 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.

But it is not all in the timing. By all accounts, Mehdy has a superior command of the vehicle code.

“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.

“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.”