A woman whose son has been charged with violating the Motor Vehicle Act is due back in court to fight two charges that happened at a time she says her son could not possibly have been driving.

In March, Angela Curran and her husband received a summons for two traffic violations that had occurred on Jan. 4, 2017.

The summons wasn't for Angela — it was addressed to her son, Justin. She opened it because her son was serving a sentence at Northeast Nova Scotia Correctional Facility in New Glasgow for robbery, and had been since July 23, 2016.

"We kind of laughed and thought [the charge] would go away. Little did we know we'd be ... six months later, still having to go back to court and say 'It couldn't have been him,'" she told CBC's Information Morning.

Accused of 2 offences

The summons said that Curran's son had been charged with driving without insurance and a valid licence — and because he hadn't responded, he'd been found guilty.

He was ordered to pay nearly $2,600 in fines by May, or else a warrant could be issued for his arrest.

Because their son was already in jail, Curran and her husband responded instead. Within days of receiving the summons, she and her husband explained to an official at Halifax provincial court that their son was incarcerated.

That official struck the guilty convictions, but told them they'd need to go to court anyway to fight the charges. A court date was set for June.

'There was no negotiating'

At court in June, Curran said her husband explained to the police officer who had charged their son that he had been incarcerated at the time the charge was laid.

"The officer was just adamant that he looked at a mugshot on their computer screen in his car [on Jan. 4], and that's who was driving the car, and there was no negotiating that," said Curran.

On the advice of a family member who works in law enforcement, Curran then obtained proof of her son's dates of incarceration from his case management officer at the jail, where he is serving a sentence for two years less a day, and sent it to the officer who had charged him.

'I don't know where I'll turn'

When she didn't receive a response to that email, she took the letter to the courthouse. Despite those attempts, Curran still has to go to court on July 20.

Given her experience thus far, she's not confident the outcome will be a good one.

"I don't know where I'll turn if there's not a resolution on July 20 because I am sure not going back to court again over this," she said.

No response from authorities

CBC News asked Halifax Regional Police and the municipal prosecutor working the case for comment, but no response was received by deadline

Halifax Regional Police said they would contact Curran, but she said she hasn't received a response.

Curran said she's not interested in how the police came to believe it was her son in the car. In fact, she's concerned that if she or her son were to delve into what happened, it could drag him back into a world he's trying to leave behind.

However, Curran said she wouldn't have a problem with a police investigation looking into who was driving the car that day.

Waste of resources

She's also frustrated by the resources that have been required to deal with the charges, both on her part and that of the police and municipal prosecutor.

"They could be doing something far more productive than having to go to court about a traffic violation, when it's clearly now known it wasn't him," she said.

"Unless I had twins and didn't know it."