COLUMBUS – They say you can’t fight City Hall but a West Jefferson woman found you can. With a little help from a comma.
The Twelfth District Court of Appeals Monday reversed a decision of the Madison County Municipal Court that found Andrea Cammelleri guilty of a parking violation, thanks to a punctuation mark omitted from the law.
After Cammelleri’s 1993 Ford pickup was towed and she was cited for leaving it parked for longer than 24 hours, she argued in court that the village ordinance stated that it was unlawful to park on a village street “any motor vehicle camper, trailer, farm implement and/or non-motorized vehicle for a continued period of twenty-four hours.”
She claimed in Municipal Court that her truck is not a “motor vehicle camper” and the law does not apply to her. She submitted evidence that she searched the words on the internet and several types of recreational vehicles were listed, including covered pickup trucks that converted them into campers.
Since her pickup was not fitted for camping, she said it did not meet the definition of a motor vehicle camper.
The court did not see it that way, saying that by reading the ordinance in context it was clear the ordinance was just missing a comma. She was found guilty and ordered to pay court costs.
The higher court overturned the decision, however. Judge Robert Hendrickson noted in writing for the court that the ordinance separates vehicle types by comma and that reading the words “motor vehicle camper” as one term does not produce an absurd result.
The court vacated the charges against Cammelleri.