NY1 For You: Driver Fights Allegedly Unfair Parking Ticket For Months
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Most people who get parking tickets just pay the fine, even what they think they do not deserve them. One New Yorker, however, has fought a ticket for almost a year with no luck. NY1's Susan Jhun filed the following NY1 For You report.After getting a ticket for parking in a Kips Bay, Manhattan spot last January, Lee Rottenberg did just about everything he could to prove that he was parked here legally.
“I showed the address. I showed that I couldn't have been parked there. I showed pictures of the signage,” says Rottenberg.
The disputed spot is in a "No Parking" zone, but Rottenberg's handicapped permit entitles him to park there anyway.
“I have my right leg amputated, my left leg is very disabled, so I have a handicapped parking permit which allows me to park in a no parking zone,” he says.
However, the permit was not the problem.
“The meter maid wrote that I had a handicapped permit, but either made a mistake or lied and said I was parked in a no standing zone. And I'm not allowed to park in a no standing zone,” says Rottenberg.
There is a no standing zone directly behind where Rottenberg parked, but he says he would not have parked there anyway, because at that point in the road there is no room to park.
“I would have been blocking traffic,” he says.
Yet that argument, along with time- and date-stamped photographs that Rottenberg took when he received the ticket, were not enough to satisfy the Department of Finance that he was parked legally.
“They did offer me a recourse,” says Rottenberg. “They said I could file a Section 78 with the Supreme Court, which costs $305, and it doesn't seem feasible to pay $305 to fight a $115 ticket."
Rottenberg did ultimately pay the ticket and appealed it, but the Department of Finance upheld its decision.
“If I made a mistake, if I broke the law, then I'll admit to it and I'll pay my fine, but I didn't do anything wrong,” says Rottenberg.
NY1 reached out to the Department of Finance, but officials declined both to comment and to revise their position on Rottenberg's parking ticket.
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