An Existential Parking Conundrum: How Can You Prove You Aren't Where You Aren't?

I hear from a lot of people who complain about parking tickets they feel they received unfairly. Oh, the perfidy! Oh, the injustice! Often, upon closer examination, their excuses don't quite wash: They didn't see the "No Parking" sign. They were just a little late to their expired meter.

I'm sympathetic but I'm not that sympathetic. Then I heard the Curious Case of David Yacobucci.

David, 38, lives in Fairfax County. I will go into some detail about his commuting patterns because they are material to his case: Every weekday about 6:30 a.m. he drives with his fiancee to the Vienna Metro, where he parks his Ford Escape in the Metro parking lot. He takes the Orange Line to Rosslyn, where he works in the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Postal Service. In the evening he reverses the commute, exiting the parking lot by swiping his SmarTrip card.

If David is to be believed, he never drives into the District on a weekday.

That is why he was so surprised in October when he received a notice in the mail from the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles that he had an overdue parking ticket. According to the letter, at 11:05 a.m. Sept. 26, 2008 -- a Friday -- a ticket was written to a vehicle bearing Virginia license plates YBA7225, which was illegally parked in a residential area in the 2000 block of Fourth Street NE. Because the $30 ticket had not been paid on time, David owed $60.

David was perplexed. He didn't remember even being in the District. He decided to fight the ticket. He mailed in an adjudication form, claiming innocence. He was informed he was still liable. He gave his fiancee power of attorney to contest the ticket in his place at a hearing in December. The DMV excused the penalty but found him liable for the original $30 infraction.

David's friends said he should just pay up. He refused.

Then, on April 2, he received another Notice of Unsatisfied Parking Tickets. A ticket had been issued at 11:04 a.m. Feb. 24, and another at 10:58 a.m. Feb. 25, both in the same block of Fourth Street. The fines were again overdue and had grown to $120.

"So here I am, glad I didn't follow my lifelong friends' advice to pay the first one," David said.

He got copies of the parking tickets from the DMV. (He had never seen them.) They showed the offending vehicle was a Ford pickup; David drives a Ford SUV. He contacted the general counsel's office at Metro and requested his SmarTrip records. They showed that on the dates in question David entered the Vienna turnstiles about 7:10 a.m., exited Rosslyn about 20 minutes later, reentered Rosslyn around 4:45 in the afternoon, exited Vienna about 5:10 p.m. and had $4.50 deducted for parking.

But, said the DMV, although that may prove David's SmarTrip was used to enter and exit the Metro, it does not prove his vehicle wasn't parked in the 2000 block of Fourth Street NE. He was contacted by a collection agency.

On April 4, David woke up at 3 a.m. with an idea. He went online to the Virginia DMV Web site and ordered new plates.