Question and a warning

[bad64chevelle]

I will leave the name of the town out of this , but I wanted to see if anyone else has had a similar issue. On Friday 2/12 I receive an official legal notice (post marked 2/10) in the mail from a town in north NJ. That I had an outstanding parking ticket 3 am on 1/3. Okay , I was not there so there must be a mistake. It's my truck , my license plate but I can guarantee I wasn't there . Now here's the twist I missed the court date (since I never got the original ticket) so I need to plead not guilty by 2/10 (remember it was post parked that date and it's now two days later) or pay the ticket or have a warrant issued for my arrest on 2/17 . Great . I call the court . Repeatedly. For 4 hours . Finally at 3:45 pm someone answers, and we go over the ticket and informs me that the ticket is for my truck, no doubt . And when we go over it , it's for a black truck . My truck is light blue . Not dark blue , not black . The court clerks best response was , well the officer must be color blind . And goes on to tell me that since I'm now too late to plead not guilty , that I must pay ... Or I will have a warrant issued .

I paid the ticket because it does not make sense to hire a lawyer for a $55 ticket but still. This isn't the first time I've had an issue with this town actually . My work paid for a bogus ticket there previously. I've never had my truck in said town , no one borrowed my truck, it's a bs ticket!

Has anyone run into this garbage before ?!

[wrong generation]

my mom had this happen to her about 5 years ago. she got a thing in the mail stating she owed $ from a parking ticket in nyc. which she was clearly not in nyc nor was her car. long story short. she was able to get the ticket dropped because who ever wrote the ticket. wrote it in script and one of the letters in the licence plate could have been looked at as one of two letters. one way came up as her car the other came up as a similar car. she insisted they take her to court. on the day in court she was able to prove she was not in the city on that date nor was her car. and that they should go after the other car. the judge agreed and dropped everything no lawyer was needed.

[BonzoHansen]

Newark has been known to do that. Philly did it to me. It's a BS money grab

[bad64chevelle]

I probably would have shown up on the court date had I actually known about it , just to fight it . But , since it was close of business on Friday , a holiday Monday , I figured I was kinda screwed . I guess chalk it up to a lesson learned ... I don't know what lesson though . It's just garbage . i guess it's just a crap shoot as to what license plate number they make
Up.

[6spdg37s]

its gotta be a city and not a town ... or an extremely small town....

[3.4 grape of wrath]

That happened to me.The city was Newark. I just called and they said it was a mistake.

[sweetbmxrider]

I'm pretty confident you should have been allowed to request an adjournment. You are allowed your day in court just like anyone else for anything else.

[bad64chevelle]

Yes it's a city. I'm sure I could have fought it and I could have dragged my feet , but at what cost time and money wise . Unfortunately that's probably how they expect most people to react. Pay the damn thing or lose out on a full day's pay , to not spent 55 bucks . Or hire a lawyer , lose my days pay, and probably still lose that 55 bucks . Just irritating that this crap happens . I guess more often than I thought.

[69RSZ]

Here is a way to probably avoid this from repeating again.GET NEW PLATES for your truck.They make fake plates that look real and if there is a plastic cover over the plate the officer might not be able to see the hologram thru the plastic and write the ticket anyway.

[SilverDropTop]

Here is a way to probably avoid this from repeating again.GET NEW PLATES for your truck.They make fake plates that look real and if there is a plastic cover over the plate the officer might not be able to see the hologram thru the plastic and write the ticket anyway.

Not sure about NJ law but in NY, you get arrested and your car gets taken if you put fake plates on it. Also, plate covers are illegal.