Vindicated!


I beat the parking ticket...

On Dec 17, 2005, I blogged about my LA parking ticket, received unbeknownst to me on my birthday, October 11, 2005. Some birthday present!

The problem was and is: I was not in LA on that day, nor was my wife. And nor was the car in question, which is my wife's Camry.

I first got the notice of delinquency for the fine in November. This, of course, was the first I knew about the ticket at all. The notice I received said the car was a white Toyota with my license number and a May expiration. Pay attention to these facts.

To this day I have not seen a copy of the original citation, which is the city's entire case against me.

I took pictures of the car showing my license plates (part of the citation was for not properly displaying both plates) and that the color was not white. I sent a statement that neither I, my wife, or the car in question was in Los Angeles on the day in question and requested an administrative review. You must go through this step in order to fight a ticket. It's unlikely to change anything, as the people who do this sort of review are not paid by the City to find you not guilty. Not surprisingly, the citation was held to be "substantially" valid.

The next step was to request a hearing, which could either be in person or by written declaration. I could not attend in person, as it's 400 miles from where I live and work, and I had just started a new job so I could not take time off easily. So I got my wife's boss and administrator to both sign statements that she was at work all day that day. I really lucked out, because I celebrated my birthday by going to see the movie "Serenity" on that day, and I could still print out a copy of the Fandango ticket, which indicated that I would have been in the theatre in San Jose at the time this citation was issued. Not proof, but surely very suggestive. And I once again submitted pictures of the car. I wrote a statement of the facts I had possession of, and bundled all that with a check for the amount of the citation (which I had to post as bail), and waited. And waited. And waited. It's now just over three months after submitting all that stuff, and I finally got a letter from the Parking Violations Bureau of the City of Los Angeles.

The contents were the hearing officer's explanation of why I am not liable for this citation. He states that the car cited was a white PONTIAC, with expired tags, and renewable in November. And he noted that the pictures of my car show it to be a metallic beige Toyota, with the plates as cited, and with current registration, and registration due in May. Since I didn't have the original ticket, I did not know there were so many discrepancies between my vehicle and the citation. In fact, the notice of delinquency listed a white Toyota, with registration due in May (which is correct, except for the color). So: someone in that Parking Violations Bureau fudged the citation, and the administrative reviewer (same person, perhaps?) ignored the obvious discrepancies between my evidence and that in the citation. Which tells me exactly what kind of operation the LA City Parking Violations Bureau is.

Fortunately, the hearing officer considered the evidence more carefully and found in my favor.

I'm a happy man. I beat City Hall!

One final comment: This is one of only two tickets I've ever gotten in 40+ years of driving. The other one was a citation for driving solo in a carpool lane. I elected to fight that one, and I also won that fight as well. So I'm two for two. Hope that's the last; I might not be so lucky a third time....

Posted: Tue - March 21, 2006 at 09:15 PM        

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