Man Fights Parking Tickets Meant for UPS Truck

Mike and his wife Amy are understandably frustrated. A judge at Parking Violations ordered Mike to pay for tickets a UPS truck is getting.

"I feel it isn't fair," Mike said. "I'm basically being judged to pay something that isn't mine."

Fox 5 talked to the UPS driver.

"Do you mean to say he's actually getting my tickets or something like that?" he said.

Mike, the fellow ordered to pay the tickets, isn't the driver, and has nothing to do with the UPS truck. The UPS guy said his truck gets tickets regularly.

"I get maybe one or two tickets a day," he said.

Yet the bills for some of those tickets are going to Mike Godoy, a Marine and Iraq war veteran. He and Amy, a Brooklyn teacher, feel helpless.

"I'm really worried," Amy said. "We just got married and this is very stressful."

They regularly find late payment notices for the UPS truck's parking tickets in their mailbox.

"I started getting tickets in the mail with late fees and double parking," Mike said. "I didn't even recognize the license plate at first."

Turns out the license plate on the UPS truck ends in JY. But the ticket-writer is putting down something that looks more like JX.

"It seems like the officer is writing sloppy," Mike said.

And that sloppy mistake -- that JX -- traces to a license plate that the Department of Motor Vehicles said Mike once had, but turned in 2007. Although the plates were destroyed, the listing and the connection to Mike remain in the state computer.

With proof of that, Mike went to parking violations to see a judge.

"I brought the receipt for those tickets that were turned in to judge and he said, 'Not sufficient evidence,'" Mike said.

The judge refused to throw out 10 tickets, and Mike thinks the hearing took about 5 minutes.

"I feel they are not taking enough time to look at the evidence," he said.

In order to appeal Mike was told at that time he had to pay. With the fines and late fees the bill was a whopping $1794.80.

"I don't have the money to pay it and I'm really worried about my credit," Mike said.

And recently Mike got notice of 6 additional tickets, and went back to parking violations.

"I handed in these tickets and they were dismissed by the same exact judge," Mike said.

So the same judge dismissed a set of tickets, and refused to do anything to overturn his previous ruling ordering Mike to pay other UPS truck tickets that aren't his.

Now Mike and his wife are frightened because they don't have a higher authority parking violations to appeal to.

"We are a young couple trying to make it and I am constantly taking off from working trying to handle these tickets that aren't even mine," Mike said.

Amy is worried, too.

"I'm worried that its going to ruin our credit," she said. "We could lose our house because of all of this."

Because of an apparent mistake by a judge. It may be the atmosphere here at parking violations that leads judges to make mistakes that cost motorists money.

In July we reported that current and former parking violations judges say it is hard to do the right thing.

Judges say they feel pressured to churn cases to make the budget number for their department:
$ 570.5 million in 2010 and $575 million in 2011 -- all from parking ticket fines. They are expected to handle 10 cases an hour.

When we tried to ask the chief administrative law judge in parking violations, the boss, about fairness we got no answers.

"I think the department of finance has to be held accountable," said City Councilman James Vacca, who is critical of what he see as a fairness gap in the PVB.

"These are Department of Finance judges, and I think for a while probably they have escaped the radar," Vacca said. "I think what you are doing has put them on the radar screen in a very effective way."

In the meantime Mike and his wife are stuck with those UPS parking ticket bills.

"It is very, very difficult and it is frustrating," he said.

It is especially frustrating because he continues to get tickets for the UPS truck. A spokesman for the Department of Finance did not offer to help straighten this out, but suggested Mike appeal.

Because of court challenges, the Department Finance is no longer requiring people to pay to appeal.