Toronto man makes business out of fighting parking tickets
Last Updated: Monday, December 22, 2008 | 9:01 AM ET
CBC News
A Toronto man has started a business with the noble ideal of making justice available to the masses — more specifically, he's helping people fight their parking tickets.
Every year, the City of Toronto issues nearly three million parking tickets.
Most of the tickets get paid and that adds up to millions of dollars in revenue for the city.
Paying the ticket is simple — at your local ATM or even online.
But if you want to fight the ticket, the process gets a little more complicated and a little more time-consuming.
In 2007, out of the nearly three million tickets, only about six per cent of people requested a court date.
Martin Mulinsky is one of them. He was angry when he saw the little yellow ticket flapping under his windshield wiper. He didn't think he deserved the ticket and vowed to fight it.
System 'inherently makes you guilty'
But he had to go downtown, in person, to Metro Hall to set a court date.
"It is annoying," he said. "I had to take time off work to come here today, there's got to be a better way. This is a system that inherently makes you guilty."
The process allows 14 days to set a court date. But most people don't have the time to make the trip to Metro Hall.
That's where Greg Kasparian comes in.
Kasparian, 26, has a website, parkingtickets.to, that takes the hassle out of setting court dates.
He said many people who have a legitimate excuse end up paying the ticket because it just isn't worth their time to fight it.
"You get back into your daily routine of going to work, going home, everyone's always busy, especially this time of year," said Kasparian. "So I think it's time that creates that disconnect where all of sudden you're just like, 'I'll just pay it.' "
Steady response
Kasparian's service means all the ticketed person has to do is register the ticket and driver information on the site and for a fee of slightly more than $6, Kasparian will arrange a court date.
"That essentially buys the service of me going and setting up a court date on your behalf," he said.
The response has been steady. On Friday, he brought in 10 tickets and was successful in arranging court dates for all of them. He's got about 50 more requests to process.
The city says it is legal.
But there is one more problem.
Traffic court is so backlogged that the court date will probably be more than a year away.
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