I win...sort of...

A few weeks ago I was shocked to find a summary judgement announcement in the mail stating that I had been found guilty on four parking tickets and was now "boot eligible." As I had not gotten any tickets recently, this was a shock. As I looked closer, things were even more surprising.

This first ticket was apparently a citation for an expired meter on December 1st. I had not gotten the notice, so this was odd...

...of course the fact that the address of the infraction was in front of my house made it all the more bizarre.

As you can see from the photo, there are no meters in front of my house.

So, a couple weeks ago, I spent my lunch hour fighting the ticket. I've not had a lot of luck in traffic court, but as you can imagine, I was a bit steamed about this one and sauntered into the court confidently with photos in hand (that is Exhibit A to the left). And I triumphed. The judge ruled in my favor and I was told by the attendant outside that I should "frame judgement" as I was the only person who had come away from that particular courtroom smiling all week. I guess all that time at work around lawyers has rubbed off...

Of course, the other three tickets were another galling story.

All three were for expired city stickers...

...in 1997...

WTF? I honestly have no idea if I was guilty of those infractions or not. But how do tickets disappear for more than a decade? The city is pretty prompt about sending out those summary judgement documents. Admittedly, I get a couple tickets a year---its part of the cost of living in the city. But in 10 years, these tickets have not shown up on any of the documents from the city. When the city announced ticket amnesty a couple years back, I even searched to make sure that there was nothing outstanding---and these did not show up.

So, my traffic court triumph was muted by having to pay of the potentially bogus fines. Whether real or not, I have no way to prove that I had a city sticker at the time, so I sucked it up and paid the hundreds of dollars in fines. I know the city is in desperate financial straits, but this seems a pretty slimy way to get back into solvency.

Sounds like a job for The Parking Ticket Geek and his/her excellent Expired Meter blog...