Victory for man fighting cul-de-sac parking ticket spree
It turns out you can fight city hall — at least sometimes.
Calgarian Martin Morett took to the courts Wednesday in what he believed would be a futile bid to fight what he felt was an unjust parking ticket he received last October outside his Woodbine home.
But in the end, traffic court commissioner Lori Plater accepted Morett’s evidence he believed he was entitled to park his Jeep perpendicularly to the curb, as his neighbours in his cul-de-sac did.
“I’m very pleased with the judge’s decision, I didn’t expect to win the case,” Morett said, shortly after Plater threw out his Oct. 6, $40 parking ticket.
Morett told Plater he was under the assumption it was OK to park nose in to the curb instead of parallel to it because he’d never been ticketed for doing so before. But he awoke Oct. 6 to find a bylaw officer had ticketed about 25 vehicles in the cul-de-sac, where everyone parked that way because of limited on-street availability.
Morett added his belief was fuelled by an email a resident had received in 2007, from thenenforcement manager Al Bazar, apologizing for the issuance of six parking tickets at that time.
And he further told Plater that he’d seen bylaw officers ticket vehicles parked by a grass median in his cul-de-sac, while ignoring ones parked as his was last fall.
Plater said while prosecutor Paul Frank had proven all the elements of the offence, she found the city resident was acting in good faith.
“I am satisfied that the defence of due diligence has been made out on a balance of probabilities and I am dismissing the charge,” she said.
Plater said while Morett could have contacted the city to inquire about the rules, seeing his neighbours park that way and bylaw officers ignoring them led him to believe he was doing nothing wrong.
But she warned her decision was case specific, and now that Morett knows the rules he won’t have the same defence again.
Calgary Parking Authority spokeswoman Adrian Mrdeza said because council has asked city administration to look at the issue of “angled parking” in cul-de-sacs, they have temporarily suspended handing out tickets in those cases.