Plate And Switch
Near the start of the COVID-19 Lockdowns, I got a call from my insurance agent that my policy was pending cancellation due to my license being suspended. This was news to me, as I was not even aware of an infraction, let alone a consequence.
My agent informs me that, according to MassDOT’s records, I was charged with reckless driving in Washington state back in September of 2018. When I asked why the charge only just appeared, he revealed MassDOT has been integrating old records into a new system and countless unresolved tickets have suddenly cropped up; without using names, he even tells me one of his other clients just got a suspended license over an unpaid parking ticket from 1982.
Since this took nearly two years to even appear in MassDOT’s files, I figured I had nothing to lose by trying to appeal the default judgment, especially since I knew for sure I was not responsible for this alleged infraction; I had a passport and photos proving I was in Italy when they claim this happened.
Unfortunately, the courts were backed up for months due to the lockdowns. Therefore, I went to MassDOT directly to try to talk, being sure to record the call. While adamant I had to pay, the manager I spoke with utterly refused to discuss the situation or show me the evidence against me before hanging up on me without giving me a chance to prove that I could not have been responsible.
Rather than try to handle it with MassDOT again, I looked up Washington’s DMV and made a recorded call to it instead. I gave the woman all the information about the infraction (my name, the date, my plate, and the charge) and…there is no record of a reckless driving charge against me on that date.
I asked her to vary the date, omit my name, and change the charge, and every time the woman claimed there was still nothing. She could not understand why MassDOT was insisting I had such a charge, either.
I tried MassDOT one more time. While this manager was more reasonable, all that means is I was not hung up on after being yelled at. This person was still adamant I was guilty, and I had to pay, and still insisted I was not entitled to see the evidence.
I then pushed, one final time, for him to actually look at the evidence himself, and he assured me that it was my vehicle in the file, so it was definitely my problem. The only good thing that came out of my exchange with Washington was that I looped in my insurance agent. He tried asking on my behalf as well, and when he received the same response, he was able to use his confirmation and my formal appeal to get the company to continue my policy despite my suspended license. However, that would not make the courts move faster so we could even begin to reinstate my license.
At this point, my non-lawyer mind figured there had to be a violation of my rights in here somewhere, so I called an actual lawyer to confirm. My first bit of good fortune came from the secretary, rather than a lawyer or a paralegal. She told me about a news article from the end of 2019 that may explain everything.
Turns out I was not the first person in Massachusetts to have a phantom reckless driving charge appear. The cause: Massachusetts does not have a negligent driving charge. When states with such a charge forwarded the charges to MassDOT, MassDOT was escalating them to Reckless Driving rather than reducing them to what the charge would have been in Massachusetts.
This escaped the notice of myself and many others since it was only in print and buried. After that, I explained the rest of the situation, including why I am sure this charge cannot be my responsibility, and she connected me with one of the lawyers. However, the lawyer told me not to call Washington again and let him handle it; there is a chance the woman in Washington did not do any of the subsequent searches and just took an extra break, and that being the case would hurt his current position.
Rather than a normal meeting, my lawyer took the call recordings along with my passport and photos to threaten MassDOT that they were (near as we could tell) sitting on evidence that my car had been stolen and further refusal to turn over the evidence would expose them to both criminal and civil liability.
They, very quickly, surrendered the file.
Then he called Washington and asked for its copy of the file as well, this time navigating it properly with only Negligent Driving. And there was the very same file. The very same, not my file.
Some moron in Washington failed to check for data integrity. The Massachusetts plate had been entered with two characters swapped and another one a complete typo; by chance, this linked to my white Toyota Tacoma rather than the red Honda Civic in the photo.
Washington was bad enough, but now in MassDOT, no one on its side of the situation looked at the evidence either, most notably, the RMV manager who assured me that he had opened this file and it was, indeed, my truck in the file.
After nearly a month of going back and forth, MassDOT finally removed the ticket from my record, reinstated my license, and paid the full amount my lawyer listed in the lawsuit. That covered all of my legal fees and gave me plenty of cash to survive the lockdowns even before the checks went out.
