When it became clear that I wasn't going to be lawyering for a career, the law and I came to an agreement where we'd go our separate ways and not bother each other. This accord took a very slight break this morning when I attended my very first parking violation appeal.

Your fact pattern: the city enacted a parking ban on February 12, which means that those of us who park on the street had to move our cars to a city lot, which I did. The ban runs 48 hours, but may be rescinded earlier than that if possible, which happened in this case while I was at work on Thursday. I returned to Beverly on Thursday night to find a ticket on the car for a meter violation.

My thinking, based on past experience, is that the meters in the public lots were not active during the ban. We'd never put money in them in the past, and never received a ticket during a parking ban prior to this one. The announcement of the ban, which we checked on the city website, was silent on the issue of the meters.

According to the sargeant who heard my appeal, the meters remain in force during the day, which he said was noted on the city's parking hotline and in something that runs in the local paper every year. That the same information isn't presented on the website didn't seem to be an issue for him. In fact, he seemed to think that a person would still call the number, which seems redundant.

I'm not so much irritated about the fine as the feeling that it'd be pretty easily avoided if a line like "parking meters are still operational during the snow emergency" was added to the online announcement. It's pretty minimal, and given how likely people are now to go online rather than pick up a phone, I think it'd avoid future problems (unless this is some sort of revenue generating racket, which wouldn't surprise me). Given that a couple of other people got stuck paying what sounded like pretty dodgy handicap parking-related tickets (though I only heard their side of the story after their hearings), I shouldn't feel too bad.

I can't help but think this bodes poorly for jury duty. I'm going to be foreman on a Mob trial and wind up becoming Frank Henderson from Caspar, Wyoming after the defendant swears his vengance. I can feel it.