Columbus, MS asked in Traffic Tickets and Identity Theft for Tennessee

Q: What if you receive a parking citation via mail from a city 3 hours away, but you were not in that city on that day?

Received what appears to be a parking citation via mail. Neither I, nor my vehicle were anywhere near that city, 3 hours away from me, on the day that the ticket was issued. This appears to have been issued based solely on my license plate number. I called the court office and they said that the citation was issued against a Chevy Tahoe, which is not my vehicle, but the ticket shows my license plate #. This has to be a mistake of whoever wrote this citation making an error on the license plate number. Once again, my vehicle and I were nowhere near that location on that day. Now I have to take a day off from work and go to court in a city 3 hours away to clear this up. What should I expect? Do I have any legal recourse? Burden of proof is on them to show that my vehicle, which is not a Tahoe, was in that location on that day. I expect them to throw out this ticket, but I am extremely angry that I am having to put up with this. I could lose my job over this.

1 Lawyer Answer
Anthony M. Avery
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Answered

A: Parking Tickets are not Moving Violations of the Rules of the Road. Usually City/County Ordinance or Code violations. That is non-criminal. You can go to Court and contest, or forget about it. It will not generate points but might affect your credit score. I fail to see how this could affect any job.

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