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Class-action litigation over New Jersey's red-light cameras has expanded to six more cities and towns and could grow in the weeks ahead. Marlton lawyer Joseph A. Osefchen has filed suits in Glassboro, Monroe Township, Newark, Edison, Stratford, and Woodbridge in the last 10 days contending that motorists were illegally fined for running red lights after municipal traffic officials failed to complete required inspections of the cameras and...

Motorists who got $85 tickets from red-light cameras deserve a refund, says a Marlton lawyer who is challenging the cameras in court. Joseph A. Osefchen filed a class-action lawsuit Friday in Superior Court against Cherry Hill Township, and said he planned to file similar suits next week against Monroe Township and Glassboro, which also operate red-light cameras. The Cherry Hill suit, brought on behalf of two motorists who paid $85 each after receiving tickets generated by cameras at Springdale Road and Route 70, contends that the township has not conducted required inspections and certifications of the traffic signals, and cameras.

Red-light cameras soon will be legal in some Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties communities, under a bill that was poised for legislative approval Friday. A bill to continue Philadelphia's red-light camera program past its scheduled expiration Saturday was broadened in the Senate to include Pittsburgh, as well as Philadelphia-area towns with more than 20,000 people and accredited police departments. That would include Falls, Middletown, and Warminster Townships in Bucks County; West Chester and Tredyffrin, West Goshen, and West Whiteland Townships in Chester County; Chester, Media, and Haverford, Radnor, Springfield, and Upper Darby Townships in Delaware County; and Norristown and Abington, Horsham, Lower Merion, Lower Providence, Montgomery Township, Upper Dublin, and Upper Merion Townships in Montgomery County.

Traffic engineers were out Wednesday in South Jersey, counting cars and timing traffic to see if red-light cameras could meet a new state rule that has forced a temporary ban on some traffic tickets. And irate motorists were calling local officials and police, seeking refunds for $85 fines already paid for allegedly running the lights. The state Department of Transportation on Tuesday ordered 21 towns, including four in Camden and Gloucester Counties, to stop ticketing motorists while the lights were checked.

AN EXPENSIVE flop. That's essentially the verdict in a 23-page audit the city controller released Wednesday on the city's video-surveillance cameras, first installed in 2008 to fight crime and violence. But the Nutter administration countered that Butkovitz's numbers were outdated or just plain false. City Controller Alan Butkovitz said that although the city spent $13.9 million already and has committed another $3.6 million for more cameras and repairs, less than half of them work.

Red-light cameras in four towns in Camden and Gloucester Counties may be trigger-happy, and the towns must stop ticketing motorists while the lights are checked, the state Department of Transportation ordered Tuesday. Cameras at intersections in Cherry Hill, Glassboro, Stratford, and Monroe, and 17 other New Jersey communities may be connected to traffic signals that are improperly calibrated, the department said. The lights may not have a sufficiently long yellow phase to meet state requirements under a pilot program permitting 25 towns to install red-light cameras.

Citing cameras that function less than half of the time, a price tag of close to $14 million, and a lack of oversight that leaves many pieces of equipment gathering dust in a warehouse, City Controller Alan Butkovitz released a damning audit Wednesday of the city's long-troubled video-surveillance project and suggested that the money would have been better spent hiring more police officers. Six years after Philadelphia began installing cameras in high-crime areas, the report found just 47 percent of the cameras functioning as of February.