What defines a Hit and Run with property damage in California? Do I need a lawyer if I plead guilty? What are the potential penlaties?

I’m not a lawyer, but this was what I was able to find.

Here’s the California statute regarding this, what you were obliged to do by law, when you hit the other car. The maximum fines and penalties are mentioned at the end of the statute.

What you’re supposed to do, if you can’t locate the owner of the vehicle, is:

Leave in a conspicuous place on the vehicle or other property damaged a written notice giving the name and address of the driver and of the owner of the vehicle involved and a statement of the circumstances thereof and shall without unnecessary delay notify the police department of the city wherein the collision occurred or, if the collision occurred in unincorporated territory, the local headquarters of the Department of the California Highway Patrol.

I’m assuming you failed to do one or both of these things and there was a witness who wrote down your license plate number.

Hit and run isn’t a good thing, of course, but this seems to be about as minor as a hit and run generally gets; no moving violations, no one killed or injured, etc. And I’m sure that the fact that you’ve already had your insurance company pay for the repairs to the other car is going to help you too. I don’t think you’ll go to jail to jail either, but it does appear to be a misdemeanor charge. You’ll probably just pay a fine. Unless you end up getting an attorney who can work out a better deal.

I found some information on what the procedure is for getting a court appointed attorney in California is in cases like this.

Good luck.

Don’t plead GUILTY. Get a lawyer. You may be able to fight it and at least get the criminal charges dropped. The case may be dropped all together if there is no hard proof that you did it.

That’s why it’s always best to at least get out of the car and PRETEND you’re writing a note so that no one will rat out your tag

Contact legal-aid

Welcome to Fluther, by the way.

You certainly will not go to jail unless there is some particularly aggravating circumstance involved here. The California jails are already full enough with real criminals that they aren’t putting people in stir for cracking the lens on a brake light and failing to report properly.

Since you arranged to have the claim made on your insurance, then obviously you have identified yourself to the driver of the other vehicle. Therefore my assumption is that you have apparently failed to notify the police, and all the prosecutor has to go on is the anonymous (most likely) call to the police notifying them of the damage, and your plate number.

Get together your paper for this:
Whatever notification you gave to the other driver
A copy of the other vehicle owner’s claim, which should include the date and place of the “offense”
A statement from your insurance company that the claim was paid

See if you can make an appointment with the prosecutor prior to the court date and review all of this. This is going to show the prosecutor that you did everything you needed to do… except notify the police. There may be a small fine for that, and the prosecutor may want to take the case to court to press that, if he wants to be a dick about it. But more than likely he will drop the prosecution, give you a stern lecture about notifying the police—and putting the fear of God into you (which has apparently already happened anyway)—and the thing will end there.

There’s no point in him taking a “case” to court when the only issues remaining are purely procedural ones; court time is too valuable for that. Your interview with him, if you can arrange it, should help to convince him that there is nothing at all to prosecute. If you’re organized and think this through, you should be able to handle the whole thing without an attorney, though it will cost you some time.

Hopefully, you won’t have to enter a plea at all.