On Mon, 03 Mar 2014 12:40:20 -0500, Andrew > wrote:

> Evan Platt wrote:
> > On Fri, 28 Feb 2014 09:25:36 -0500, richard >
> > wrote:
> >
> >> On Thu, 27 Feb 2014 20:00:14 -0800, Mark Taylor wrote:
> >>
> >>> I was found guilty of cellphone gps use in CA and now they overturned the
> >>> law according to a ruling released today.
> >>>
> >>> http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-cou...-while-driving
> >>> California court OKs using cellphone map while driving
> >>>
> >>> Since I used a similar argument, that I was just using the GPS, is there a
> >>> way I can get my money back?
> >>
> >> Too bad.
> >> Let's say you got a ticket last month for doing 65 in a 55mph zone.
> >> Today, the speed limit is changed to 65.
> >> Can you get your money back from the citation?
> >> Nope.
> >>
> >> You might be able to petition the court to have the record expunged.
> >
> > Totally different bullis.
> >
> > Maybe you should try putting on your thinking cap before you open your
> > mouth for once?
> >
>
> Evan, Richard;s comment seems most certainly applicable in general.
> Just because a law is made however doesn't (and I would guess more often
> than not) is not retroactive.
> . . . .
> Now for the future, it's a (IMHO) stupid ruling and probably will
> (again) be changed. I would venture one might spend MORE time looking
> at a map that reading a short text. I don't know how this one got
> through the CA legislature.

Some questions for invalid.com Andrew:

Why do you seem not to have noticed that the OP asked about
the retroactive application or not of a judicial decision in a case in
which the facts were undisputed and in which the appellate court
purported to rule what the law was apparently including at the time he
was tried and convicted instead of ruling that it was changing the
law?

Why do you talk about what you guess seems to be the law but
without providing any reference to support that guess or any example
to support what you say seems possibly to be so more often than not?

Do you think Blackstone was or was not correct in saying
that judges do not actually create and instead find the law and, if
not in general, might this be so when, as here, what is involved is
what a statute means and how it should be applied and not how some
statute enacted or which became effective only after the OP was tried
and convicted?

Do you agree or disagree with the classic formulation that
an overruled decision illustrates merely a failure of perception of
what the law was and therefore never actually was the law and that the
overruling decision is not one of new law and instead merely an
application of what was the law?

No matter what you may think about such jurisprudential
conundrums or, if you prefer, principles, why did you say what you did
despite what, in California, is said to be a basic and general rule
that, absent special circumstances requiring a different conclusion,
judicial decisions generally are given retroactive effect?

What do you think about Justice Rehnquist's dictum that the
principle that statutes operate only prospectively, while judicial
decisions operate retrospectively, is familiar to every law student
[United States v. Security Industrial Bank, 459 U.S. 70, 79 (1982)]
and whether it ought or ought not give the OP solace? If that
principle familiar to every law student ought not apply to the OP, why
not?

Ought any of this not matter to the OP who refers to an appellate
ruling in which the principle enunciated by the court applied as a
matter of law to undisputed facts of that case but he said merely that
he made an argument that was similar, in other words, not that the
charge against him was the same as in the ruling he cited or that what
the court in his case had ruled were the facts of his case were the
same as what later were not contested facts in the newly cited case?

In other words, even if it is a general rule in the state that
judicial decisions are applied retroactively, what difference would
this make for the OP since no one can tell from the OP's posting that,
even if it was not necessary also to deal with the other issues he
raised about timeliness or not of an appeal or other means of review,
etc., that new ruling applies to him at all?