Monday, June 15, 2009

M Slash 1, DC 0

I am pleased to announce that I have emerged victorious in my fight against the Man. I went to traffic court yesterday to fight the parking ticket that was wrongly issued to me (or, at least, to a Subaru with the same tag number as my Pontiac), and had the ticket dismissed in about 3 minutes. The judge did a double-take when I answered “No” to the question “This ticket was issued to a Subaru with license plate number …, is this correct?”, and things just went uphill from there.

Shockingly (or not so), my story was not the most appalling of the group. One poor woman parked illegally in a street cleaning zone, got towed to a rush hour zone, then got towed from there to a meter, resulting in three tickets in a matter of hours. Luckily, the judge found the towing records in the system to verify her story, and dismissed the last two tickets. I assume that the towing company chose those spots on purpose so they could continue ticketing and get some sort of financial "thank you" from the city. Oh, DC!

4 comments:

Alex said...

Congratulations! But hint, although I'm sure it was an interesting experience, you can save yourself some time and contest tickets by mail. For an obvious mistake like this, you just have to state your case, and provide something that supports it.

As an added bonus, even when they find against you, it takes about 6 months to work through the system and there is no doubling of the fine.

Also not sure about your conspiracy theory about the tow trucks... like most local government malfeasance it's more likely due to laziness/lack of interest in doing the job right. :)

MK said...

I thought about contesting by mail, but I don't trust this city. I wanted to make sure they got the evidence, and I wanted it done ASAP.

And the tow companies are private, not city-owned. Usually they take cars to their own lots, so I'm surprised they towed this one to other spaces. Twice. In a busy neighborhood (U St/ Dupont).

FamousDC said...

Take it to the man!

Anonymous said...

You rock! Can you represent me in Philadelphia? Take your pick of situations...they can all be yours!