<p>Beware, it is hard to fight for justice.</p>
<p>In June, DH received a citation on 3 unpaid parking tickets on a Chevy dated in 2004 and 2005 from the “GREAT” city of Chicago. The problem is that neither of us even stepped foot on the state or the city for the past 20 years, and nor have we owned a GM car for the past 20 years. My first question is why it took them so long to issue the citation? Do they really have 3 years backlog of work? If they searched the database and couldn’t find the registration back then, what does it mean if the registration suddenly appeared in the database 3 years later?</p>
<p>DH is a faculty in a state university, these tickets were issued when the school was in session. He would have had to find someone to take over his classes had he traveled to Chicago. And we live over 700 miles away. Of course, the grate city of Chicago would not believe him.</p>
<p>H went to our local DMV. But the clerk couldn’t find that license tag by searching my husband’s name nor could she find the license tag anywhere in the database. She forwarded the request to the division in our state capital. A employee faxed a 5-page document to Chicago and received a confirmation. Meanwhile DH wrote to contest the citation and was told that his contest was denied and the decision was final and if he wishes to appeal, he will have to file a lawsuit against the city of Chicago. GREAT!</p>
<p>So two weeks ago, DH asked for help from our state and this time some higher ranking officials got involved. Chicago claimed that they never received the fax. The state faxed the document again and received a confirmation. But still, Chicago insisted that the registration belongs to DH and would not reverse the decision.</p>
<p>D has a close friend whose father is a lawyer. H asked for help about the lawsuit. They just got back from vacation yesterday and the father called H right away. H described the whole ordeal and gave him the vehicle license # in question. He will look into it.</p>
<p>This morning, H opened his wallet and took out his driver’s license for no reason at all. He realized that his driver’s license # is the same as the vehicle registration # in the citation (the # was fresh in his memory since he just talked to the lawyer late last night)! He immediately e-mail the GREAT city of Chicago. Well, they will have to submit the finding to the review board in two weeks and the review board will make a decision.</p>
<p>This reminded me an incident a few years ago. An out-of-state parent (only 30 minutes) got a parking ticket from our city. She appeared in person to contest the ticket. Her defense was that she couldn’t have been there when the ticket was issued. She did not offer any proof but our city official chose to believe her. End of story. And yet, when our state provided the proof to the city of Chicago, Chicago still would not relent.</p>