Florida woman taking case over ‘outrageous' fines to state Supreme Court after wracking up nearly $200,000 in penalties
Officials in the city of Latana, about 20 minutes south of Palm Beach, even fined Sandy Martinez for how she parked in her driveway. That alone set the single mom back a hefty $100,000 as daily penalties piled up.
Martinez's parking fines started accumulating in May 2019. When all four family members' cars were home at her household, sometimes one would end up with two tires on the lawn.
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3 Martinez filed a lawsuit against Lantana, a town of roughly 12,000 residents, in 2021.
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The penalty for that? A whopping $250 a day.
After the first citation, Martinez tried to arrange a visit with a code-enforcement officer to show she had corrected the violation. But those efforts proved 'fruitless' and the daily fines accumulated, she said in a lawsuit she filed in 2021 against the city of Latana and local code enforcement.
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'Six-figure fines for parking on your own property are outrageous,' Institute for Justice Attorney Mike Greenberg, the lawyer representing Martinez, said in a news release about the case.
3 The town's main beef with Martinez is how her family parked their cars on their own driveway.
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The city also fined Martinez for 'minor and purely cosmetic' cracks in her driveway, according to court papers.
Martinez didn't have enough cash to fix the driveway right away. She was then hit with $75 fines every day for 215 days, for a total of $16,125 — 'far greater than the cost of an entirely new driveway,' she said in the litigation.
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Then there was the fence.
3 Martinez and the Institute for Justice are taking the case to Florida's Supreme Court.
A major storm downed it, but resolving the insurance claim to fix it took a while. During that time, Martinez was hit with $125 daily fines for 379 days, totaling $47,375.
Martinez lost when she took her case to court in 2021, with the lower courts ruling against her.
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Now she thinks it's time for Florida's highest court to weigh in on a constitutional basis — the right to be free from excessive fines and government abuse, protected by the Florida Constitution's Excessive Fines Clause.
The case epitomizes 'taxation by citation,' something small towns, more prone to economic hardship, can sometimes rely on for part of their budgets, according to the Institute.
The Institute says municipal code enforcement has become a 'cash cow' in Florida, with some towns generating millions of dollars annually.
Local officials did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
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