4 ms·
Die on? But how - he can challenge the fines in a court of law. Since it's a vanity plate, adding an extra notoriety won't hurt.
by xxs 7y ago
Die on?
But how - he can challenge the fines in a court of law. Since it's a vanity plate, adding an extra notoriety won't hurt.
- xeromal 7y agoCourt isn't cheap. You're paying for it with a lawyer or with your own time
- giancarlostoro 7y ago> Droogie contacted the DMV who told him to change his plate. He refused because he didn't do anything wrong. While they wiped the fines off his record, unfortunately for him, they didn't fix the problem in the system so once again, Droogie has accrued another $6,000 in tickets that he had nothing to do with. He says he won't be paying those either. Except he just contacted the DMV. No lawyers necessary.
- jedberg 7y agoKnowing the California DMV, that contact probably took at least two hours.
- dawnerd 7y agoNumber of years ago I was frustrated because they never sent me my renewed card and it turned out they never updated my address even though I did the paperwork. Took it to twitter and tagged @CA_DMV and they responded pretty quickly and took care of it. Got my new card pretty much next day.
- rtkwe 7y agoReally I'm surprised they didn't just add NULL to the list of banned words and ban/refuse to renew the tag which seems eminently within their powers.
- c22 7y agoPerhaps they did and the renewal system just assumed that banned word was missing and silently skipped it.
- kelnos 7y ago... and then the second half of the parent's sentence (which you conveniently ignored) applies: he's paying with his own time. I dunno about you, but I value my time way too highly to voluntarily use it to spend time on the phone with the DMV every month or three.
- xeromal 7y agoYeah, we're on Hackernews so I assume most people on here make at least 50+ an hour. The CA DMV will cost $200+ at least.
- vageli 7y ago> Court isn't cheap. > You're paying for it with a lawyer or with your own time At some point surely you can countersue for harassment?
- kelnos 7y agoFor the first time or two, maybe. But you'll be paying for it with hours, possibly tens of hours, of your own free time. And the US legal system is a fickle beast; what seems to you like a slam dunk might not actually be so certain. After the second or third time, the judge will ask, "why didn't you just change your license plate to something else and avoid all this hassle?" And when you answer, "I've grown fond of the plate, and want the DMV to fix its systems", the judge will sigh, and rule against you for wasting his/her time instead of just changing your license plate.
- vageli 7y agoWhat do you mean "after the second or third time"? Are you suggesting that if this person were to sue for the repeated harassment and presumably prevail (with some kind of damages attached) that the behavior would persist?
- foepys 7y agoI can image something more fun to do with my free time than sitting in court every few weeks...
- exfed 7y agoOn top of that, if anything, forcing the government to fix it's bad code (insert snarky ambiguity between software code and legal code) can't be a bad thing. I'd buy the guy a beer.
- cortesoft 7y agoExcept they won't fix it, and he will have to keep filing protests
- jspash 7y agoThe problem is it's a "a privately operated citation processing center" that's causing the problem. They might even be instructed to hand-enter a NULL for these cases. I'm don't really see an incentive for the govt agency to do anything about it. It's no skin off their nose. They'll just keep sending the tickets.
- samthecoy 7y agoAt some point, can you not file some kind of harassment lawsuit? Is it legal to continue to send someone bills for which they aren't liable?
- Grollicus 7y agoDon't you have some kind of illegal prosecution laws? In my home country people could go to jail for that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- saalweachter 7y agoThat's assuming it's an error in their code. For all you know, they have a list of too-clever license plates (null, no plate, etc), and they purposefully divvy up the no plate tickets among them.
- xxs 7y ago"hand-enter a NULL for these cases" <-- should be a reserved word then.
- cortesoft 7y agoFigure of speech... I just mean he is making a stand for something not that important but causes him (and only him, really) inconvenience
- shawnz 7y agoMaybe this particular bug inconveniences only him, but it exposed an improper practice that in general could have affected others too.
- xxs 7y agoI know what "die on" is - it's just inappropriate in the context: nothing bad has actually happened to him.
- esoterica 7y agoYou obviously still don’t know what the phrase “choosing to die on a hill” means.
- xxs 7y agoYeah, just b/c he is stubborn enough and doesn't wish to give up his vanity plate instead of folding. Pretty much nothing that hard/uphill battle has happened to him.
- alanbernstein 7y agoThere are two options: die on the hill, or retreat. He is not retreating. Therefore he has chosen to die on the hill.
- shawnz 7y agoThose would be the options if there was an attack against him, but there's not any attack against him. Wrongly addressed tickets are hardly even a minor inconvenience. I think that's what the parent is saying.
- macspoofing 7y ago>he can challenge the fines in a court of law. If he sees spending time and effort expunging his record every few weeks as worth the trade-off for the 'extra notoriety', then power to him. I wouldn't do that.
- xxs 7y agoI'd presume - the court decision may force the agency to fix their code.
- cannonedhamster 7y agoHe can challenge the fines but still has to pay court costs most likely.