Come join me next Monday at 9am in Judge Larsons courtroom (County Justice Center, Spruce Street) if you want to support my efforts fighting City Hall. I have spent many hours preparing this appeal, with input of some friends in our legal club. (There is a small chance that the city attorney will ask for a postponement in order to prepare a reply brief, but more likely we will probably have trial that day.) I will try and copy the appeal brief into the comments below. Wish me luck! -JM Local Doctor fights City Hall On September 12, Jeff McCloskey, A local Doctor of Chiropractic returned from giving a lecture at CMU to find his vehicle had received a parking ticket. The offense? Parking 5 feet from a driveway. But McCloskey says he had left ample room for any cars to enter or exit the driveway, that there were no complaints that his car was blocking anything, and there were no signs on the street indicating any restrictions to parking a certain distance from the driveway. He believes that in the absence of any signs, a warning, or other notification, the City has failed to meet its obligation of the notification aspect of due process of law, which is protected by both the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution and the Colorado Constitution. McCloskey fought this case originally back in October, in GJ Municipal Court, with local Judge Care McInnis not agreeing with his arguments. But he feels that the law is on his side and is ready to fight another round, with a de novo or new trial/appeal in Mesa County Court on Monday Feb. 10. McCloskey hopes that Judge Gretchen Larson will agree that issuing parking tickets in poorly defined, vague and ambiguous situations, without any warnings or signs indicating the offense, is wrong, and invites arbitrary enforcement. He hopes that the city will erect signs notifying the public of this potential infraction, or make a policy to first issue a warning, or otherwise change their practice to afford residents some sort of notification before summonses are issued on their first brush with what he calls this invisible rule the City of Grand Junction is enforcing.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 20:11:10 +0000