Tired of traffic tickets or other fines? How to file a minor offence complaint
Updated: May 17
Dealing with fines can be a challenging and complex process. Under the Romanian legal system, the minor offence complaint is the legal means through which individuals can challenge tickets issued for minor offences. Each filed minor offence complaint triggers a contravention lawsuit in which the plaintiff can challenge the imposed sanctions and seek compensation for damages. Typically, filing a minor offence complaint stays the execution of the sanction until the judge reaches a verdict in the case. In this article, we will explore the key aspects of minor offence complaints, providing clear guidance on when, how, and why to file one.
What is a minor offence complaint?
The minor offence complaint is a lawsuit petition specific to the contravention field. It is submitted by an individual or legal entity sanctioned through a contravention report, and it is used to challenge the sanctions imposed by the authorized state bodies, such as the police or local authorities. The offender acts as plaintiff in a minor offence complaint and has the opportunity to present their point of view and provide evidence and arguments in their defense.
Filing a minor offence complaint initiates court proceedings, where the offender will be judged against the public authority of the state that imposed the fine or contravention sanction.
How are contravention sanctions established?
Before filing a minor offense complaint, it is essential to understand in detail what it is that you’ve done wrong. Identify in the sanctioning report the description of the facts and the legal text applied by the reporting agent. Check the referenced legal provisions.
As a rule, contravention sanctions can only be established through laws, ordinances, or government resolutions. If you have been contraventionally sanctioned for an act established by other types of normative acts, such as orders or decisions of local administrations, it may be necessary to address the issue of the authorization of these institutions to establish contraventions through the minor offence complaint.
Specifically, contraventions in certain areas are established and sanctioned by resolutions of local or county public administration authorities where such attributions have been established by law and only to the extent that contraventions in those areas are not established by laws, ordinances, or government resolutions.
Most commonly, reporting agents who can impose sanctions include mayors, officers and non-commissioned officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, specially authorized individuals, persons empowered for this purpose by ministers and other leaders of central public administration authorities, prefects, presidents of county councils, mayors, the general mayor of Bucharest, as well as other individuals specified in special laws. Officers and non-commissioned officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs ascertain contraventions regarding public order defense; traffic on public roads; general trade rules; sale, circulation, and transport of food and non-food products, cigarettes, and alcoholic beverages; and other areas of activity established by law or government resolution.
If the reporting agent or public institution operating in a certain field is not authorized to sanction certain contraventional acts, the minor offence complaint should include mentions regarding this aspect, constituting a defect external to the minutes that can lead to its annulment.
Which are the most common contravention sanctions?
Sanctions applicable to minor offences are of two types: primary and complementary.
Primary minor offences sanctions are: warning, fines, and community service.
Complementary contravention sanctions include:
seizure of goods intended, used, or resulting from contraventions;
suspension or cancellation, as appropriate, of the approval, agreement, or authorization to exercise an activity;
closure of the unit;
freezing of the bank account;
suspension of the economic agent's activity;
withdrawal of the license or approval for certain operations or for foreign trade activities, temporarily or permanently;
demolition of works and restoration of the land to its initial state.
Contraventional sanctions, both primary and complementary, are applied in relation to the severity of the committed act. They must be proportional. Both types of contraventional sanctions can be contested through a contravention complaint.
What can you contest through a contravention complaint?
The minor offence complaint can be used to challenge a variety of contravention sanctions. The most common ones include:
traffic fines.
fines related to illegal parking or non-payment of parking fees;
suspension of a driver's license or motorcycle license;
fines imposed in the field of construction;
sanctions related to consumer protection, such as product labeling, arrangement of products on shelves, or sale of products under unauthorized conditions;
sanctions for non-compliance with competition obligations.
In principle, any other type of contraventional sanction provided by current legislation can be contested through a contravention complaint.
As a rule, filing a minor offence complaint suspends the execution of the sanction. In other words, the offender is not obliged to carry out the sanction during the process of resolving the contravention complaint.
What should you include in a minor offence complaint?
Although it is possible to file a minor offence complaint without legal assistance, the involvement of a lawyer specialized in contravention law can have a significant impact. A lawyer can guide you in drafting the complaint and propose arguments you may not have considered, increasing the chances of success in contesting the sanctions.
When we say “lawyer” we are not referring to the traditional system where you seek recommendations and establish costly legal consultations, but to a modern and efficient approach: instantly order a professionally drafted minor offence complaint, which you can confidently use in any type of contravention process. It contains detailed arguments for various defects in the minutes of contravention that can ensure success in court. You just have to choose the arguments that apply to you from the included model by answering a few predetermined questions. In a few minutes, you have a professionally drafted minor offence complaint that you can use confidently in court.
Moreover, the minor offence complaint may include a request to replace a sanction with a less severe one. The most common such request in contravention complaints is to replace fines with a warning, generally formulated as a subsidiary request. This is done to give the judge the opportunity to apply a less severe sanction in those situations where, although a minor offence has been committed, its severity does not warrant the sanction imposed by the reporting agent. If such a request to replace the sanction with a less severe one is not included in the contravention complaint, the judge will not be able to modify the sanction if it is found to be disproportionate. The Docs & Deeds minor offence complaint model also includes such a subsidiary request.
Lack of mandatory content from the sanctioning report
The minor offence sanctioning report should include several mandatory elements:
name, surname, position, and institution of the reporting agent;
name, surname, domicile, and personal identification code of the offender, the description of the minor offence indicating the date, time, and place it was committed;
description of circumstances that may contribute to assessing the gravity of the act and evaluating any damages caused;
indication of the legal act establishing and sanctioning the contravention;
indication of the insurance company, in the event that the act resulted in a traffic accident;
possibility of payment, within 15 days from the date of delivery or communication of the contravention report, of half of the minimum fine provided under the law;
deadline for appealing the fine and jurisdiction of the court.
In the case of foreign citizens, stateless persons, or Romanian citizens residing abroad, the report will also include the following data: the series and number of the passport or other border crossing document, its issuance date, and the issuing state.
In the case of a minor offender, the report will include the names, surnames, and domiciles of the parents or other representatives or legal guardians.
If the offender is a legal entity, the report will include mentions regarding its name, registered office, registration number in the trade register, and fiscal code, as well as the identification details of the person representing it.
At the time of concluding the contravention report, the reporting agent is obliged to inform the offender of the right to raise objections regarding the content of the finding document. Objections are recorded separately in the contravention report under the heading “Other mentions”, under the penalty of nullity of the contravention report.
The absence of mandatory mentions in the contravention report can lead to its annulment, regardless of the events that occurred in fact. The judge will not order the annulment in all cases where one of the above-mentioned mentions is missing, but sometimes only if the omission in question has caused the complainant harm.
It is important for the complainant to expressly indicate through the minor offence complaint the mandatory mentions that are missing and how they have been affected. If you use the Docs & Deeds minor offence complaint model, you will find all the information you need to understand when this sanction of annulment applies.
When can you file a minor offense complaint?
The minor offence complaint must be filed within 15 days from the date of delivery or communication of the contravention report.
The 15 days are calculated procedurally, meaning that the day of communication of the contravention report and the day on which the term expires will not be taken into account (and for the latter, not even the non-working days according to the law). In other words, in reality, there are 17 calendar days or sometimes even more in which you can file the minor offence complaint. However, if you are not familiar with the calculation of procedural deadlines, count 15 days to file the minor offence complaint to avoid any issues.
Minor offence complaints filed outside this deadline will be rejected, and the offender will lose the right to contest the contravention report.
Who judges the contravention complaint?
The minor offence complaint is filed with the competent court, which can be any of the following: the court in whose jurisdiction the contravention was committed or the court in whose territorial jurisdiction the offender resides or has their registered office.
A recent legislative change from April 22, 2022, introduced an alternative jurisdiction, allowing any of the mentioned courts to adjudicate the minor offence complaint. Previously, only the court in whose jurisdiction the contravention was committed was authorized to judge the minor offence complaint. Such exclusive competence created practical problems, especially in situations where determining the place of the contravention was difficult.
Take online contraventions as an example: the offending user is in town X, the service provider is in Y, and the reporting agent observes the contravention in town Z. Who knows where the server or internet provider is located? Such situations often raised practical issues in determining the competence over the contravention complaint, leading to unnecessary prolongation of the process.
How to pay the court fee for the minor offence complaint?
The court fee is an administrative fee that the complainant must pay to initiate a legal process. The court fee is mandatory, and failure to pay it may result in the dismissal of the minor offence complaint. For a minor offence complaint, a court fee of 20 lei must be paid.
Paying the court fee for filing a minor offence complaint is easy. The first step is to identify the payment account to which you must remit the fee. Look for the account indicated for the payment of fees by the administrative-territorial unit (municipality) of the payer’s domicile. You can find it on the website of the administrative-territorial unit or on the official Romanian courts of law website.
After identifying the payment account, you can make a bank transfer by payment order, or you can pay online on ghișeul.ro, or even at a post office through a postal payment order.
It is essential to save proof of payment of the court fee and attach it to the contravention complaint. We recommend making this payment before filing the minor offence complaint to avoid prolonging the procedure.
If you do not submit proof of payment of the court fee with the contravention complaint, the court should send you a payment notification requesting you to make the payment, along with the amount. Beware that, if, for any reason, you miss such a notification, you risk the dismissal of the minor offence complaint.
Attendance at court hearings
After filing the minor offence complaint, you will be summoned to the scheduled court hearings.
If you do not want to appear at each hearing or hire a lawyer to attend them on your behalf, you must mention in the minor offence complaint that you request the adjudication in absentia of the request. It's not complicated: simply mention the words “I request adjudication in absentia” in any visible place in the minor offence complaint. Usually, this mention is made in the final part, just before the signature, to avoid being overlooked by the judge. It is not a strict requirement, and you will not be sanctioned if you include the mention in another section of the minor offence complaint. The important thing is that the mentioned exists because otherwise, you risk the adjudication of the minor offence complaint being suspended, in which case you will have to file additional requests to resume the trial, or risk dismissal.
If you decide to attend the scheduled court hearings, you can check this article beforehand, which explains how you can manage your court cases on your own. With this information, you can confidently attend any court hearing. It is not necessary to hire a lawyer to support the contravention complaint, and you do not need to use specialized legal language. Your minor offence complaint will not be rejected because you do not understand certain legal terms. On the contrary, the judge has a legal obligation to assist individuals who are not represented by lawyers, meaning that they will determine the correct qualification of the requests and arguments formulated by you.
On Docs & Deeds you can instanly download a template minor offence complaint or order a customised one or schedule a consultation with an attorney.
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