Are you a homeowner? If so, have you ever wondered if your hard-earned money and property are truly safe?
Recently, Sandy Martinez of Florida got a huge shock when she received more than $100,000 in fines for simply parking her car on her own driveway.
This begs the question: Are homeowners risking it all by merely living in their own home? Let’s take a look at what happened.
Sandy Martinez was caught off guard when she found out that she had been fined $250 per day for over a year due to code violations on her property.
Her offense? Parking two wheels of her car in the grass rather than the driveway.
Even though this was on her own property, it still resulted in an astronomical fine of over $100,000.
To make matters worse, there were additional cosmetic violations such as cracks in the driveway and a broken fence that added up to an extra $65,000 fine.
Upon further investigation, Sandy discovered that Lantana—the town where she lives—has strict laws regarding off-street parking spaces.
All driveways must be asphalt or concrete and “in good repair” according to town codes.
What makes this case even harder is that Sandy’s family consists of four drivers who often need to squeeze four vehicles into their limited space.
Given this reality, it’s not surprising that one vehicle ended up partially parked on grass leading to these hefty fines.
Sandy realized how unfair these charges were and decided to take action by contacting The Institute for Justice (TIJ).
TIJ has successfully helped people with cases involving big government injustice and they agreed to provide legal counsel for Sandy’s predicament as well.
TIJ argued that these extraordinary fines violated the Excessive Fines Clause of the Florida Constitution because they amounted to financial death penalty for trivial offenses like parking violations.
After much back-and-forth with city officials, Lantana eventually reduced all those fines down to just $25,000 – but unfortunately Sandy couldn’t pay them before Christmas which means she still owes nearly $160K for something so trivial.
Her lawyer Ari Bargil is now suing Lantana on Constitutional grounds in hopes of resolving this situation once and for all – hopefully without breaking Sandy’s bank account.
