Good News & Bad News

 

 

In early June 2001 Mrs. Arroyo came in to contest two tickets.  She appeared to be upper middle class, well-dressed, though with perhaps a little too much make up and a little too much jewelry (for my taste anyway).   One ticket was very old I think from 1999; and the other ticket was much more recent from March of this year.  Now I knew at the outset that this woman was going to have trouble with her 1999 ticket.  Because if you don’t come in within three months of a ticket you don’t get a right to a hearing unless you have a very good reason.  Such as, “I was in a coma”  “I was in prison in the 3rd world country”  “I was dead”.   With old tickets you also need a “meritorious defense.”  Anyway I swore Mrs. Arroyo in and I asked her why she hadn’t come in sooner with the 1999 ticket.  She said “look, I moved around a lot and I know I probably should have come in sooner, but it was an unfair ticket. 

 

I said, well why didn’t you just mail the ticked in with a defense?  And she said, you know the guy never even gave me the ticket but I remember it exactly the way it happened!  I was driving my husband to the emergency room to have his leg removed.  She said that son-of-a-gun officer told me I couldn’t double park my car.  He never gave me the ticket, but I’m sure that I’m looking at a copy of it that that’s what it was.  Then I said, well what about the notices you got about the tickets?   She said well because I moved around I didn’t get the notices. 

 

I asked her if she had anything else to say,   and she said no that was everything.   I knew at this point that I was going to have to find her guilty, not because I didn’t believe her story, but because I believe she had known about the ticket and had simply taken too long. 

 

I said, OK then let’s talk about the March 27th ticket which was issued for being at a bus stop.   How do you plead, G or NG?  NOT GUILTY she said emphatically.  Why not I asked?    Her body started to shake, and she said through chelnched teeth, “my husband was very sick after dialysis.  I pulled over to help him as he was wrenching his guts out!”   I never even saw the son of a gun write the ticket.  But he MUST have seen me!  What was he thinking? 

 

I try not to ask too many non-essential questions, especially when I have no idea where they’re leading

 

But as I was caught up visualizing the event, I said “That’s terrible!”  And without thinking I said, “How IS your husband??”  And with that, she burst into tears and sobbed, “He died!”  

 

I looked in my drawer, and horrors I didn’t have my emergency box of tissue.  And in trying to comfort her I didn’t really know what to say, so I asked “When did he die?”  While sort of hyperventilating, she wailed “NO VEM-BER ELEVENTH!”

 

It struck me then that something was terribly wrong with her story, since the ticket was from the following March.   When she collected herself, I asked Mrs. Arroyo, can I ask you exactly what happened at the time that you got the March ticket? 

 

She sort of looked at me confused and sort of looked at me and said “But I just told you, my husband was sick and I was helping him.”   I’m confused, I said, because you just told me that your husband died last Fall, and the ticket was issued this Spring. 

 

She said, “I never said my husband died last fall”  And I said I think your exactly words were [AS BEFORE];   She said, that makes no sense.  My husband didn’t die last fall, he died on March 28th, a week after the ticket at St Vincent’s Hospital.    Then before I could say anything else she said, but wait, I have his death certificate.  And with that she reached into her bag and pulled out a huge stack of medical records and documents.  She thumbed through them for a minute as I waited with baited breath.  She finally said she didn’t have it but could certainly get it for me if I granted her an adjournment. 

 

I asked her if she could tell me her husband’s birthday, which she readily provided.  I told her I’d be back in a few minutes, and called a short recess. 

 

Now parking judges have a vast array of  resources at their disposal.  I played on the computer for a few minutes and came back to the courtroom. 

 

“Good news or bad news first, Mrs. Arroyo?”   Shaking her head in mild exasperation she said “Bad.”  I said, “The ticket from 1999 is simply too old;  I’m denying your motion to vacate the judgment.  I’m not persuaded you didn’t know about the ticket.  The records show several notices were mailed to you and were not returned as undeliverable. 

 

I’m also finding you guilty of the more recent summons of being parked at the bus stop, as you haven’t sufficiently established a medical emergency at that date and time. 

 

She stared at me mildly dumbfounded it seemed.  “And the good news,” she asked? 

“Well, this may shock you,  but a review of the records indicate that --- I don’t know how to say this but – your husband is alive and just re-registered his Honda Civic last week!”

 

With that, she grabbed her papers, shaking angrily, and marched out.  In the weeks that followed, I wondered what made her cry?  Did she believe that her husband died when she said it?  What she imagining the death of someone else whom she conveniently transposed to her husband?  Or was she crying because she knew she was going to have to pay these tickets?   I’ve asked friends if they could cry on command for $1000, for $50,000 or for half a million.