Judicial Administration

Fines

Functionality for online payment of fines will feature at a later stage in the development of this website. This facility will, however, be limited to certain types of less serious traffic offences because fines are usually payable immediately upon being imposed in court.

The Judicial Administration collects fines imposed by the court as well as fees for court services. The Judicial Administration also collects compensation and maintenance payments which, when received, are paid out to third parties. The funds collected for payment to third parties are known as Court Fund Payments. Accepting payments online is expected to reduce the work for the cashiers and to improve customer service, while also offering the public greater convenience. There would be a particular improvement in customer service where the individual or law firm making payment is resident overseas.

There are various types of fines for traffic offences for which payment may be taken online. Each fine type would be listed within a database together with the amount payable.

Online payments will be made by debit or credit card. However, a limit will be put on the amount that is payable by debit/credit card. Unless there is such a limit, the debit/credit card transaction fee (which is a percentage of the amount paid) would give rise to a situation where, beyond a certain amount, the price of the payer’s convenience would be borne by the public purse rather than by the payer. It may be decided, for instance, to limit credit card payments to a maximum value of $1,000 per transaction, or impose a credit card payment surcharge. This limit will be configurable by the website administrator.

In order to prevent users from circumventing the limit by paying amounts in excess of the limit in more than one attempt, the system will allow partial online payments up to the maximum only once.

Fines that are above the maximum accepted by debit/credit card could also be accepted by electronic funds transfer, in addition to by cheque, thereby potentially reducing the Administration’s banking fees and the amount of work for the cashiers. In order to cater for such cases, the Administration’s bank account details would be published on the site, together with instructions.

The website administrator will be able to edit the fine calculations for each type of fine, and to add new fine types.

It will be possible for fines to be paid for a given user or case (using the user’s identification particulars or case number), and for more than one type of fine to be paid per user or per case (e.g. for an individual with more than one fine outstanding). Whereas each case is assigned a unique number which can be used for identification purposes, the identification of users would require more than one identifying particular, as there is no nationally unique identification (e.g. Social Security Number, National Identification Number, etc.,) assigned to citizens of the Cayman Islands. As there are many individuals with the same first name and last name, date of birth, etc., users would have to be identified by more than one variable. In addition to first name, middle initial and last name, users could also be identified by any three (3) of the following:

  • date of birth
  • driver’s licence number
  • occupational status
  • company
  • vehicle registration number
  • parking, speeding, or other ticket number
  • mother’s maiden name
  • e-mail address
  • street address
  • home telephone number.

Where the user is a corporate entity, some of the variables just mentioned would not apply. The name of the entity would be used in place of first name, middle initial and last name, and there would be no mother’s maiden name, etc. The applicable particulars for corporate entities would be as follows:

  • name
  • street address
  • corporate registration number
  • Trade & Business Licence number
  • e-mail address
  • office telephone number
  • vehicle registration number (where a company vehicle is involved)
  • parking, speeding, or other ticket number (where a company vehicle is involved)

Law firms making online payments would use their assigned log-on credentials.

In order to minimise the possibility of debit/credit card fraud, the name of cardholder making an online payment would have to match with the name of the party on whose behalf the payment was being made. The terms and conditions under which debit/credit card payments are accepted would have to be such as to minimise the incidence of payments being reversed by the debit/credit card provider (also known as charge-backs). A penalty fee of say CI$50.00, in addition to the recovery of transaction costs, would have to be imposed on online payers who used charge-backs to delay or avoid meeting their payment obligations. This, of course, would be without prejudice to any criminal sanctions that might flow from the payer’s action.

While the plan initially is to limit payment of fines to only routine traffic offences, regardless of the type of fine, the system would provide a facility for the user to print a paper receipt. The paper receipt would clearly indicate the purpose for which the payment was made. In the case of the payment of fines for traffic tickets, the number of the ticket would be stated, etc. If a user did not have the means to print a paper receipt, it would be possible to use the unique receipt number assigned by the system to view the details related to the payment made by the user.