Plenty of Chicagoans contest their parking tickets by mailing a letter of protest to the Department of Revenue. Others go so far as to demand a hearing before a city administrative law officer. In rarer instances people take the fight all the way to court.
If he loses, well, so it goes. “I’m fighting the only way I know how,” Weinberg says, “which is to sue the fuckers.”
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There was his 2003 federal class-action suit on behalf of people who’d been “unreasonably detained,” as he puts it, after arrests for “quality of life infractions” like public urination. A federal court ruled in his favor in 2008 and the city appealed. It’s now pending before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Weinberg claims that on March 4 he parked his car at Ohio and Wabash and put $2.70 into the pay box, which according to his receipt should have covered him until 4 PM.
The ticket writer reiterated that the city’s policy is to ticket at 4.
On May 8 the city sent him a letter notifying him that his appeal had been dismissed and that it was time to pay up.
Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the city’s law department, said she hadn’t seen the suit and couldn’t comment until she had.
