California’s second highest court has no interest in dealing with parking tickets. A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal on April 12 rendered a decision in a case involving nothing more than a disputed $44 parking ticket. Motorist Angelica Guevara argued that the citation she received on December 28, 2008 for parking in Bell was void because the city failed to provide adequate notice of overnight restrictions. The justices made it clear they will not consider the merits of this or any other parking case.
Bell, which has a population of 36,500, has seventeen signs describing the restriction on roads entering the city, but Guevara was visiting from Oakland and did not see them. After two administrative challenges, Guevara had a trial before a superior court judge who found her guilty on March 27, 2009. That October, she asked the superior court’s appellate division to overturn the adverse ruling, but it declined to do so.
“The city’s overnight parking ordinance well may be simply a revenue generating device without adequate notice,” the superior court’s appellate division explained in denying Guevara’s appeal. “The problem is that the court cannot decide the issue.”
Citing the limited procedures for appeal laid out by the legislature in the California Vehicle Code, the Court of Appeal panel agreed with the lower court’s reasoning, insisting motorists have fewer rights in such cases.
“A parking violation… is neither an infraction nor a misdemeanor, but rather results only in a civil penalty,” Associate Justice Orville A. “Jack” Armstrong wrote. “Thus, the superior court conducting the trial de novo of a parking violation is the court of last resort; the appellate department of the superior court has no jurisdiction to review the final judgment entered in the trial de novo…. We conclude that the Legislature intended this ‘de novo’ review of the administrative decision to be the extent of the process due a parking violation contestant.”
The court likewise threw out Guevara’s request for an injunction against the city because she now knows about the restriction and will not suffer irreparable harm if Bell continues with its existing practices. The higher court also refused to provide declaratory relief.
“Here, the legal rights of the parties have been adjudicated,” Armstrong wrote. “That is to say, in the de novo trial, the superior court finally determined that Guevara was required to pay a $44 fine for parking overnight on a city street, even though she had no actual notice of the parking restriction. There is no actual controversy between Guevara and the city such that a judicial declaration would affect Guevara’s behavior — the very purpose of a declaratory relief action.”
A copy of the unpublished decision is available in a 60k PDF file at the source link below.
Source: 
Guevara v. Los Angeles Superior Court (Court of Appeal, State of California, 4/12/2011)
[Courtesy:Thenewspaper.com]
Common sense – the courts should deal with real cases. Not some one who has trouble seeing a sign in English telling her not to park overnight. She has a minor fine ($44) and now knows. What is the issue. The cost of bringing all the challenges to a signposted decision (as stated 17 signs) is way more than $44.
As someone who’s paid this kind of fine, I have to say it really is dishonest to post one sign about a three-hour maximum on one entry to a city (say, one inbound north-side street) and then fine people for parking overnight on a residential street when there is no possible way they’d a) ever see the sign since they exited off the major highway at the south end of town and b) lived on the street in question for a year and never saw anything save for the “No parking on this side of the street 1st-15th, march & April”
Yes, Peterborough, Ontario, I’m talking about you. If you’re going to ticket people for parking on a street, telling them about it is only fair.
Just about every city in Canada has a 3 hour street parking limit. On the City of Ottawa www-site it is very clearly indicated in the parking sub-section. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse.
I lived in Toronto for ten years, and the availability of a street for parking, or not, was always clearly signed. I know this and accepted it the one time I saw my Saab towed at 7:05am at Dundas and High Park (parking on Dundas was fine from 10:00am to 7:00pm). I also fought it, successfully, because such a sign was nonexistent on a residential street.
And this is Toronto, which makes no bones about how much revenue parking infractions generate.
You cite Ottawa; I have family who live in the Glebe and even there there are signs that tell you when you can and cannot park. Again, that’s fair play.
“Ignorance of the law is not an excuse” applies to common morality issues, not bylaw infractions. Having a notice on a website, or on one street sign on the least common entrance into a city, or attached to a bylaw that’s stuffed in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”, is playing dirty.
I am beginning to think that “ignorance of the law” actually COULD be an excuse. It was all very well when applicable laws could be housed in one medium sized volume but now you would need a whole building to store every federal/state/municipal law. There is not a judge or a lawyer or a cop that knows ALL the laws or even REMOTELY CLOSE.
My city is forever introducing new bylaws that they have no hope of properly enforcing or adequately educating the public on. How are the rest of us supposed to cope with all this junk?
I’m totally law abiding in principal but I am sure that I have inadvertently transgressed at times and may very well do so many times more.
My 88 year old land lady was given a $500 ticket for parking in a handicapped spot with her tires touching the painted line. She has a handicapped permit, which was displayed, but California is trying to balance its budget on the backs of motorists by any means possible. I’m impressed that this was only a $44 ticket. Most are higher, and traps are common. I’ve received two parking tickets in the past 3 years in spite of ALWAYS reading every exsting sign, even if it means walking two blocks while my friends’ mock my paranoia. I talked to the manager of a downtown San Diego luxury hotel who has trouble retaining staff. They quit when they can’t keep up with their parking tickets, and it isn’t unusual here to see parking nazis working in teams, measuring distances to curbs, consulting levels to determine imperceptible slopes so they can ticket for not having front wheels cut in the right direction, and scrutinizing every single car for any finable offense. If you have the bad fortune of being out of town, your car gets towed in a couple days and starts racking up storage fees that hit four figures quickly. Our courts should be protecting us from these tyrants, not granting them carte blanche.
CJ – two things. First what happened to the 88 year old is indefensible but it does not mean that this woman and her $44 fine was unfair. Second since California is hamstrung by contradictory propositions around property tax, budgets and all that they have to resort to desperate and under hand means. I don`t support that and wished they had a saner tax and budgeting procedure that the other 49 states have and who don`t have to resort to this level of unfairness.
You’re missing the PAINFULLY OBVIOUS. The court said that they won’t be bothered with reviewing the legality of civil penalties, meaning that when the $5,000 parking trap is common, the court has set precedent saying that victims of our legislatures have no recourse.
It also means that the court won’t be bothered to hold the lower courts and tax collectors cops accountable because it’s just a parking ticket.
The last ticket I got was in San Diego about 7 years ago. It was a WARNING ticket for turning left. I was following a tourist map by the San Diego Tourist Authority for a drive through town. I did not see the very small sign high on a post on the LEFT hidden behind a store’s sign that said No Left Turn. Two cars in front of me and one behind me also turned. I was the one they stopped. I showed the cop the city’s tourist map I was following. A WARNING TICKET??? Good Grief.
BTW, How the sign got high on the post, I do not know…
You were profoundly ‘lucky’ to be issued a warning. My guess is you had an out of state license from a state with no reciprosity, so they didn’t have a way of collecting from you. My welcome to California was a ‘fix-it’ ticket for driving on an out of state license but giving a CA address when asked where I lived. The revenuer made it sound like I just had to get a CA license and prove it when the ticket arrived in the mail. He made it sound like he was doing me a favor. When the ticket arrived, the fine was $380 in 2002. Recent tickets people I know have received included a $700 one for stopping on the white line at a red light. He beat it, because he proved in court that he stopped on a random line on the pavement and not the stop line for the intersection, but the pig was trying to take it as far as he could. Whenever you get a ticket in CA, you don’t learn the fine until it comes in the mail. Maybe they’re worried that people will kill over $1,600 speeding tickets. Maybe they should.
CJinSD — “…the pig was trying to take it as far as he could.” PIG is not acceptable. A far worse term would be more fitting.
CJ – I was not missing the painfully obviously, thanks. If the day ever came of $5000 fines (which they won`t) then the courts would intervene because
“The court likewise threw out Guevara’s request for an injunction against the city because she now knows about the restriction and will not suffer irreparable harm if Bell continues with its existing practices.”
charging $5000 would approach irreparable harm as opposed to $44. Also if fines ever got too high the vehicle code would be changed by the democratically elected assembly. People complain about the 18c gas tax and it doesn`t go up (so we have CAFE instead) so democratic pressure does work.
We already have $1800 moving violations. I learned about them in CA traffic court in 2002. Recently a friend of a friend’s car was towed while he was out of the country. I went with my friend to try and retrieve the vehicle for him. After about 12 days in ‘storage,’ the bail for his old RAV4 was $1,700 and climbing. They were very particular about how they wanted to be paid(no plastic – how easy and non-irreparable is it for working class folk to come up with that amount?), so we didn’t even get the thing out until our third attempt, another $120 later, ch-ching!! All this already goes on, and the blame falls on courts and the people who defend and pretend.
I did not know about that large a fine, thankfully I don`t live in California which seems the most blighted by this. Why was the car in “storage”? I assume some violation.
I believe it was towed because the plates were lapsed. It wasn’t being driven, just sitting in a condo parking garage while the owner was in Russia for the summer. There are vans with cameras connected to image recognition software that drive all the streets and alleys of Pacific Beach, where I live. The plates are immediately run through the system and then an army of tow trucks yanks the cars that come up with taxes due. I learned a bit about it because of the RAV4. The towing contractor for the police has holding yards all over the city. It looks like a full employment project for thugs. At the same time, enforcement is pretty arbitrary. When I lived in La Jolla, my friends and I had our tires chalked constantly by an ambitious parking nazi. If he could ever catch us not moving all our cars in 48 hours, they’d have been towed. Meanwhile, 6 houses down the street was a white Rolls Royce which was always kept detailed, but that sat a bit high in the front. It looked a little off because it didn’t have an engine. It sat there for 2 years that I know about without ever getting ticketed or towed while our cars got white stripes marked on the tires every day. Corruption is lovely.
I’m the attorney handling the case discussed above. Thank you for engaging in the important dialogue which has transpired about the issue of motorists’ fundamental due process rights concerning parking ticket disputes.
Under California law, public roads rightfully belong to the people, subject only to “legitimate” local regulation, which must be expressly authorized by the State (i.e. the Vehicle Code). Under controlling case law, a city’s mere contention that motorist receive due notice on a local parking prohibition- simply because sings are allegedly posted at the City’s entrances- is NOT sufficient to prove requisite notice in order to actually enforce the local ordinance. (See Homes On Wheels v. City of Santa Barbabra) As a free people, we each have a fundamental right to redress our individual grievances with our Government, especially when the State punishes us or takes our property under color of State authority.
However, under California procedure (says the Court of Appeal), a parking citation contestant is only afforded a single “Parking Appeal,” which is a limited civil court hearing similar to a Small Claims case. California law does not allow anyone to challenge the the legality of any municipal fine under a limited civil case, including a limited civil Parking Appeal.
Hence, the Court of Appeal has essentially ruled that California offers absolutely no forum whatsoever for one to challenge the legality or Constitutionality of a municipal parking fine; that is, even if the laws in question violate State, federal or Constitutional law; and/or, even if the City’s method of enforcements is discriminatory, illegal, unconstitutional, etc..
Needless to say, the Court of Appeal has made a VERY critical and important decision on ruling that the public has absolutely no right to raise purely legal or Constitutional challenges in any California courthouse when it comes to local parking enforcement.
Accordingly, my client’s battle to secure motorists’ fundamental liberty, property, and due process rights continues. The case has recently been submitted to the Supreme Court of California under a “Petition for Review” (Case No. S193357). If California’s court system ultimately fails to redeem itself on refusing to afford aggrieved motorists a judicial forum to at least raise federal Constitutional challenges concerning a City’s method of enforcing local parking laws, then we will look to our federal courts for appropriate relief.
The most important reason being: our fundamental rights to liberty, property, and due process have no price tag…Stealing $44 is still theft. Extorting what may be a small amount of money from each and every person out of a mass population still constitutes a handsome amount for the taker. As a free people, we simply cannot allow our State (nor its subdivisions) to illegitimately seize, take, or steal from us without any legal accountability; not even when the amount taken from each citizen only adds up to $44…
Please explain how the court can simply refuse to hear this case.
The law clearly says, “A proceeding under this subdivision is a limited civil case.” – CVC 40230(a)
The entirety of Chapter 2 of Title Eight of the Rules of Court is dedicated to “Appeals and Records in Limited Civil Cases” so there is obviously a way to appeal a limited civil case.