Helpful Parking Ticket News No One Else Tells You About

Larry,

I just got off the phone this morning after my first experience defending a No-Idling citizen complaint from NYC DEP on behalf of the company I work for. The judge was fair and cordial and allowed both myself and the DEP representative to give our “evidence”. I had already done all of the necessary research on the statute and the exemptions from the rule, so I was well-prepared with documents and photos to defend our case. Not so the DEP rep. His citizen-shot phone video was grainy to the point of being impossible to view at times, and the complainant suspiciously avoided showing the one angle that would have shown the external parts of the cargo compartment heating unit; however, they did inadvertently show the hot air duct that leads from the heating unit along the wall of the cargo compartment that distributes heat from the unit to the cargo area that holds our shipments of tropical plants and poinsettias at that time of year (late November of 2019). And when the judge asked him about the exceptions permitted under the statute, he adamantly refused to admit what he himself had uploaded as evidence of our “crime”: the DEP rule that clarified the language in the law pertaining to permitted exceptions. He insisted that “heating and air conditioning equipment” did not qualify as exemptions that permitted idling; I pointed to the line previous to that which reads:

“2. a system that controls the environment of temperature-sensitive cargo or substances, including but not limited to food, provided that such cargo or substances are being transported in a vehicle designed for the transportation of such cargo or substances.”

The judge asked the DEP guy, “this appears to support the defendant’s claim of the cargo compartment heating system being a permitted exempted use”, but the guy was in too deep and refused to back off, even when I pointed out that the line he was leaning so heavily on referred NOT to the cargo compartment but to the driver’s cab (“…cabin comfort”).

Pretty sure I kicked their butts on this one, but I’ll have to wait for the decision to arrive in the mail. The most infuriating part of this process, aside from the butchery of due process resulting from the 29-month lapse between the date of the “offense” and when we received the summons (11/30/19, months before Covid shut down City offices), was the fact that we were not able to review the DEP’s evidence (the video) until the hearing was well underway. In no other adversarial procedure would one party be unable to be (a) confronted by the accuser or (b) access physical evidence to be presented at the adjudication hearing (unless you count red light and speed camera summonses, that is).

New York…just like I pictured it…

Larry, I thought you’d appreciate hearing this new bit of news about our no-idling case. We won our case before an OATH hearing officer on a telephone hearing with a DEP lawyer who didn’t even know his own department’s rule issued in June, 2022 that permits idling by vehicles running processing equipment necessary for the loading/unloading and environmental control of perishable cargo. Today we got in the mail a form that appears to be DEP appealing the decision against them.

First, OATH is an agency of the City of New York. They hear the cases generated by the DEP, which is also an agency of the City of New York (no conflict of interest there, hm?). Despite that apparent conflict, we won our case on the merits because we knew the law and the DEP rules and the DEP lawyer didn’t.

Now DEP is appealing a “Not Guilty” verdict. In a criminal case, you cannot appeal a not guilty verdict because it would be a violation of the Constitution’s protection against double jeopardy. Apparently that isn’t so in the People’s Republic of New York City.

As Willie Shakespeare might have put it, “Methinks the fix is in” or “there’s something rotten in the City of New York”. God help us all.