CROSS T'S
I fought a parking ticket after my truck was left for over 24 hours – a single punctuation mark got me out of it
A simple grammar mistake saved one woman from a costly parking ticket
A WOMAN who had been wrongfully ticketed by a parking enforcement officer was able to get out of the fine due to a grammar mishap.
Parking rules can be exceedingly difficult, especially when they target specific types of cars.
2
2
Andrea Cammelleri, a West Jefferson, Ohio, driver, woke up one chilly February morning and found that her pickup truck was missing from her usual spot in front of her house.
Assuming her truck was stolen, she immediately called police, who quickly located her truck - in a local impound lot after being towed away.
After digging deeper, she found that she had been cited for violating a West Jefferson ordinance that stated, "any motor vehicle camper, trailer, farm implement and/or non-motorized vehicle for a continued period of 24 hours."
Her pickup truck was cited as a "motor vehicle camper" on the parking citation that resulted in the towing, and decided to fight the ticket in court, reported.
Her careful eye noticed that a comma was missing between ";vehicle" and "camper."
She argued that her pickup truck did not qualify as a motor vehicle camper, and therefore, she didn't break any laws by parking in front of her house.
The Ohio village that attempted to convict her argued that a comma shouldn't absolve her from the fines.
"The trial court held that when reading the ordinance in context, it unambiguously applied to motor vehicles and 'anybody reading [the ordinance] would understand that it is just missing a comma,'" court documents .
Most read in Motors
Judge Robert Hendrickson took Cammelleri's side, saying that the law didn't apply to her, and let her off the hook.
He also said that if the local law wished to ban pickup trucks from parking in those spaces, the law needed to be revised to be grammatically accurate.
My HOA towed my truck away - It felt my property was taken away without knowing but I was still fined $300
"By utilizing rules of grammar and employing the common meaning of terms, ‘motor vehicle camper’ has a clear definition that does not produce an absurd result," Hendrickson was recorded saying in the court documents.
"If the village desires a different reading, it should amend the ordinance and insert a comma between the phrase ‘motor vehicle’ and the word ‘camper.’"
Due to the ruling by Hendrickson, Cammelleri was then discharged from having to pay the fine for the citation.
She was also no longer responsible for the fees resulting from retrieving her pickup truck from the impound lot or towing fees.
Topics