Dayton’s recent move to begin towing cars to enforce unpaid tickets triggered by red-light cameras has ignited rumblings from local attorneys who want to challenge the cameras in court.

Whether such a challenge would be successful remains to be seen. The Ohio Supreme Court in 2008 issued a unanimous landmark ruling in favor of red-light and speed cameras.

“It’s clear that it’s established by the Supreme Court that photo enforcement is legal in Ohio,” said Dayton Law Director John Danish.

But attorneys told the Dayton Daily News that the Ohio Supreme Court didn’t weigh in on all of the legal questions the cameras raise, including due process concerns.

Tickets from the cameras are civil summons, and not criminal citations like normal traffic tickets. That means, among other things, people who receive the citations and want them dismissed must prove they are innocent, instead of the other way around like in criminal court.

Thomas Hagel, a law professor for the University of Dayton, said towing to enforce unpaid camera citations cuts legal corners to try to collect money for the city.

“Is the collection of that money so important that we’re willing to seize people’s property without full-blown due process procedures? I think most people would say that’s too extreme,” Hagel said.

Dayton last month began towing vehicles of owners with two or more unpaid red light citations in an attempt to collect millions in unpaid citations. That resulted in an increase in ticket collections — people paid 6,184 camera-generated tickets worth about $566,000, according to the Dayton Municipal Court clerk’s office. Of that, Dayton will receive around $370,000, more than twice the highest amount the city has collected in one month in camera-generated tickets, according to city records. The rest of the money will go to RedFlex, the company that owns and operates the cameras.

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But the program has also resulted in a flood of complaints to City Hall. At least one law firm, Dyer, Garofalo, Mann & Schultz, is researching a possible lawsuit against the city over the towing program, said Mike Dyer, a partner with that firm.

Because of possible lawsuits, Danish in an interview with the Dayton Daily News declined to discuss in detail the legal arguments that backed up Dayton’s decision to begin towing to enforce camera-generated citations. But, he said Dayton’s towing program isn’t unique, and that other cities in Ohio and nationwide have similar laws.

“I know that it hasn’t settled down in terms of how some people feel, but the law seems to be pretty settled at the moment,” Danish said.

Citations mailed to car owners

Red-light citations differ from traditional traffic tickets in a few key ways. Among them: under the camera-citation civil process, police don’t have to prove a vehicle’s owner was driving the car when a camera snapped a picture. Vehicle owners are ultimately responsible.

The tickets also are mailed to the address where the vehicle is registered, and not hand-delivered like a traditional traffic ticket. That means city officials can’t be sure drivers even received them, critics contend.

Dyer said Dayton’s decision to begin towing to enforce the red-light camera tickets was not accounted for in the 2008 Ohio Supreme Court ruling.

“It’s a totally different legal analysis when the (Ohio) Supreme Court says you can have a civil summons on a traffic camera than it is to take that civil summons and use it to seize someone’s car,” Dyer said. “I think any court in the world would side with the poor person who may or may not have been driving the car.”

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger in the 2008 ruling acknowledged “due process questions” over how cities use the red-light cameras, but wrote “those questions are not appropriately before us at this time and will not be discussed here.”

John Scaccia, a former Dayton city prosecutor who is now in private practice, said this opens the door for a challenge. “Just because the courts upheld this thing under home rule, that does not mean it’s going to survive other constitutional challenges,” Scaccia said. “And I don’t think it will.”

A.J. Wagner, a retired Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge and presumed Dayton mayoral candidate, said towing a car becomes a permanent seizure of property when people can’t afford the fines.

“They (the Ohio Supreme Court) have upheld that home rule allows municipals to pass ordinances such as this,” Wagner said. “What they have not upheld is what the cameras do, and how they bypass the Constitution.”

Ohio Supreme Court dismisses lawsuits

The cameras have withstood numerous legal challenges within Ohio, the most prominent being the 2008 Ohio Supreme Court ruling. More recently, the Ohio Supreme Court in May 2011, without saying why, dismissed two lawsuits against red-light cameras. Attorneys with the Cleveland and Columbus city governments argued the lawsuits should have been filed at the local level first and not the top state court.

Paul Greenberger, a Cleveland-area attorney who filed the 2011 lawsuits with the Ohio Supreme Court, said he is preparing another court challenge. When asked, he said he isn’t just “tipping at windmills” — fighting a hopeless legal battle to make a point.

However, Ohio State University law professor Ric Simmons said any legal challenge would face an “uphill battle. I don’t see why there’s a legal problem with what (Dayton) is doing,” Simmons said.

Dayton officials and police say the cameras have decreased crashes citywide since they first were installed in 2003.