A wonderation about the legal system

A wonderation about the legal system

Yes, I’m using a goofy word like “wonderation”. I’m defining it as “a stated issue that I’m wondering about at the moment.” Through some friends examples with the legal system, I’m firmly convinced that the legal system is meant to encourage people to stay away from it as far as possible.

Example: my friend Marc Hairston. He’s an astrophysicist at UTD. He lives in Dallas and has a neighbor that in the month after Christmas was going through a bit of a tough time with things. His neighbor set out their Christmas tree in their front yard, but it wasn’t exactly on their side of the property line. It was pretty much right on the line, as a matter of fact.

Of course, the tree was placed there well after the one day of the year that Dallas’ city refuse service was supposed to pick up trees. The next thing Marc knows, not only is there a tree in his yard, but he’s got a ticket from the nice folks at Code Enforcement for having trash on his lawn. Sigh.

So, Marc calls to try and figure out how much the ticket is. He tries three times, each time waiting for someone to pick up the phone on the other end for over thirty minutes. Finally, he gets an answer.

Now, how much would you think a code violation would be? Marc’s thinking was that he would simply pay the fine and give a copy of the receipt to the neighbor as a Christmas present. Of course, his thoughts changed when he found out that because the city was “crackin’ down” on stuff like old Christmas trees, the fine was going to be $219.

So, Marc decides to go to court and argue the legitimacy of the ticket. After all, it wasn’t his tree. It wasn’t even fully in his yard, right?

Marc gets a court date in SEPTEMBER. For a JANUARY violation. He goes in on the appointed day, and he’s there in a room with seats for 60. There’s about 100 people in the space. A bailiff comes out with a sheaf of papers and says, “If I call your name, your case is dismissed, you’re free to go.”

I can see the question marks forming. Apparently the code enforcement department had been cut in half by the time September rolled around. That meant that all the people who had tickets written by officers no longer working on the force got off scot free. Did Marc? Nope.

After half the room left, the judge came in. He first asked how many people were representing themselves. Two thirds of the room put their hands up. The rest were advised by their lawyers not to raise their hands. Marc raised his hand. The judge then launched into a lecture with the following points:

1. If you’re representing yourself, you have a moron for a client and an attorney.
2. I can’t tell you what to do, but if you don’t take what we give you, you’ll be sorry.

In short, “do as we say and nobody gets hurt.”

After a while, Marc’s case is called. He approaches the bench, and the city attorney stuck here in low-level prosecutory hades says, “we’ll offer to reduce the fine to $100, plus you pay court costs of $47.” They show Marc the digital picture taken by the code enforcement officer, a rather distorted photograph where the three foot tree takes up the entire frame of the picture. Fortunately, it also showed the demarcation between the houses, so Marc quickly points this out to the judge and prosecutor. They sigh, realize that someone below screwed up, and then offer Marc the following:
if he’ll plead no contest, there’ll be no fine, but he’ll have to pay the court costs. He agrees, then they mention that because he’s pleading nolo contendre, he’ll also have to be on code enforcement probation for six months. He agrees, since by now all he wants to do is get out of there.

$47 later, he’s reporting to a probation officer.

I hope I’ve retold the story correctly. Marc can correct me on the details.

And he has:
1) Neighbors put the tree out with their regular trash on Monday (trash
day) on *their* property.

2) Garbage folks are not supposed to take Christmas trees in regular trash, not even three foot ones, that’s heavy trash. So *they* pick up the tree and just drop it next to where the trash is. However since the neighbors put the trash on the narrow strip of their property next to their driveway, trash guy has now dropped just over the line onto my property.

3) It’s January, I’m coming home late after sunset every evening and I don’t even notice the tree being there till Friday when the ticket arrived. (Neighbors were in the process of having a baby and apparently didn’t notice the tree either.)

4) The window for heavy trash being out started at 7am that Thursday. The code inspector did our block on Wed afternoon at 3 pm.

5) What was going on was that last fall the city code office was under the gun for incompetence, so all the inspectors went ticket writing crazy trying to save their jobs. It didn’t help half of them. This is mentioned in passing in page 1 of Jim Schultze’s article here

Turf Wars

Schultze got one fact wrong, he said the immediate citations would start in August 2004. They were already doing it when I got mine in January. Of course it could always be lots worse, this is the classic story of dealing with “stupid Dallas city bureaucrats”:

Guy fights City Hall

I got off easy compared to this poor guy.

6) So the tree gets put out on Monday, they write the ticket on Wed. I get it Friday when it’s now legal to be there, so I don’t even touch it and it gets picked up by the heavy trash the next Monday.

7) It took three days of calling the city to even find out what the fine was. No one answered the phone at the number on the ticket. The fine wasn’t printed on the ticket, though it did have the option of checking “guilty” and mailing a check for the fine. I’d thought of just paying it if it were $40 or $50, but the woman told me it was $278. For a three foot Christmas tree! (Another case of one-size-fits-all justice, that fine was instituted for folks with couches and half a tree worth of branches, but they don’t have any lower level, at least this bureaucrat didn’t know that. Turned out she was wrong.) So I sent in the “not guilty” and figured I’d explain it to the judge.

8) In June they fired half the code enforcement staff for incompetence and the Morning News reported that all tickets written by the fired staff would be dismissed and that letters were being sent out. I never got a letter. I asked the judge about that and he said they ran out of time and staff and had to make do with most of them turning up at 8;30 for court and then telling them *then* the charges were dismissed.

9) The courtroom seated about 48 and I counted over 75 people there that morning, filling up the jury box, the lawyers’ tables, standing in the aisles, standing by the judges bench, etc.

10) After the baliff sent all but about 24 of us home (yes, the woman who wrote my ticket apparently *did* save her job by writing enough
tickets)
the judge gave his speech and then left. He did tell us that if we pleaded no contest we were on probation for six months, but we don’t have to report to anyone and it expires automatically at the end of the time. It was the prosecuting attorney to whom we talked one at a time and offered us “a
deal”. She originally offered me the $100 fine and $47 court cost. I
explained
the story and said I was protesting since “it wasn’t my trash, it was dumped on my property by a City of Dallas employee and then I got a ticket for it from another City of Dallas employee.” So she dropped the fine and I took the court cost and the probation. I figured that if I fought it, technically the tree *was* on my property and the judge wasn’t going to be any friendlier and I’d get the $100 fine back. So when the judge came back they called me up and I plead no contest.

11) I doubt seriously I will get a ticket for speeding or be charged with murder during my probation, but given the incompetence of the system, I think *I* would probably have to call *them* and let *them* know I’d violated my probation for littering.

12) The only good side of this story is it means I’m proud to have
something in common with Arlo Guthrie.