Judge Dismisses Nine Helmet Tickets: Quigley Wins Again

Posted 9/6/2006

Richard Quigley received nine helmet tickets, four from the Watsonville Police, and five from the California Highway Patrol (CHP). This took place over a period of time between July 24, 2003 and August 27, 2004. In all cases except one, Quigley was wearing his form of headgear, a BOLT cap with DOT embroidered on the back.

On March 17, 2006, Quigley filed a motion to dismiss the tickets on constitutional grounds, and on July 14, 2006, the judge ruled the helmet law statutes were unconstitutional as applied by the citing officers, and dismissed the charges. Later, on August 16, 2006, Honorable Judge Michael Barton filed his Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Order After Hearing, to clarify his ruling.

Briefly, a few previous court cases set the groundwork for Judge Barton’s ruling. In Buhl v. Hannigan, 16 Cal.App.4^th 1612 (1993), the constitutionality of the California helmet law was challenged on the grounds that it was vague, due to the fact that a person of ordinary intelligence could not understand the federal standard of certification for helmets (FMVSS 218). The Court of Appeals rejected that argument as “absurd,” and held that a cyclist only had to wear a properly labeled helmet (a DOT certification of compliance).

Later, in Bianco v. CHP, 24 Cal.App.4^th 1113 (1994) the court ruled that the DOT sticker created only a rebuttable presumption that the helmets meet FMVSS 218, and the requirement in Buhl that the helmet only has to have the sticker does not apply if the helmet is shown to not conform with the federal standard and the cyclist has actual knowledge of this fact.  

Finally, in Easyriders v. Hannigan, 92 F.3d 285 (9^th Cir. 1996) an injunction was issued by the district court enjoining the very process the prosecution was using against Quigley. The 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, “…because violation of the helmet law requires specific intent on the part of a motorcyclist wearing a helmet that was certified at the time of purchase, the ticketing officer must have probable cause to believe that the specific intent, caused by the motorcyclist’s actual knowledge of non-conformity, exists.

Throughout the trial, it was shown that the CHP relied only on visual inspection and the DOT sticker to determine if Quigley’s helmet met FMVSS 218. Remember, according to Buhl, this is a performance standard, and cannot be applied to consumers. Quigley, on the other hand, provided evidence that the CHP relied on the so-called “DOT approved” helmet to show compliance with FMVSS 218. Judge Barton recognized that FMVSS 218 provides no authority to approve helmets, and letters from NHTSA’s counsel support that the phrase “DOT approved” has no meaning in fact or in law. 

The DA failed to make his case that Quigley had violated the helmet law as written, but Quigley did prove his case that he was wearing headgear, bearing a DOT label, and was still cited, violating the injunction issued in Easyriders, thus violating his Fourth Amendment rights, as described in Easyriders. He also provided evidence that the CHP, through “Quick Code” training bulletins, was teaching their deputies and other enforcement agencies that they could tell if a helmet was compliant, just by inspecting it. They instructed officers to look at the size of the helmet, and the amount of padding, although there are no such restrictions, measurements or guidelines in the FMVSS 218 standard.

Further, the court stated that since there is no “list” of compliant helmets or other objective criteria, a person of ordinary intelligence would not know what is required or prohibited by the helmet law statutes. The court dismissed all of Quig’s helmet tickets, including the one for no helmet at all, on the grounds that the enforcement policies and procedures adopted by the CHP and their allied agencies have rendered the mandatory helmet law void for vagueness, and otherwise unworkable, as applied by the citing officers.

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