Legal Question in Criminal Law in Pennsylvania
Motor Vehicle Code Violation
My pickup truck has a ''payload'' capacity (combined weight of passengers, luggage & cargo)of 1315 pounds. I put a 1/2 ton of stone (1000 lbs) in the bed of the truck last weekend and left the home center for home. A Tredyffrin Township cop stopped me for ''obviously being grossly overweight'' and made me follow him to PD HQ, where the ''weighmaster'' weighed the truck and told me the weight on my rear axle exceeded the rated capacity of that axle (2800 pounds) by 692 pounds. I was issued a $300 fine for violation of Sectin 4943 of the MV Code.
I'm not a contractor who hauls stuff for a living. I believed my truck was operating within my payload capacity and had no reason to believe I had too much weight in the truck, let alone on my rear axle. IN any event, there's no way I could have weighed the truck to find out.
I have appealed the citation. Do I have any valid defense? Can I claim that the statute is unfair because no ordinary citizen can reasonably comply with the statute?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Motor Vehicle Code Violation
There really is no such thing as "I can't comply with the law."
You haven't explained how the payload capacity of the axle(2800 lbs) was exceeded by 692 lbs by placing 1000 lbs. of stone in the back of a truck. That's almost 3500 lbs. If you had 3500 lbs on the back axle, it would have been visibly overweight. Still don't understand how you had that much weight from 1000 lbs. of stone.
Show how much stone the home center put on your truck and explain the assumption you made about the capacity of your truck. It's not necessarily a legal defense (the truck was either overweight or it wasn't) but maybe the DJ will cut you a break.
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