Floating Market Closed from Merchant's Old Parking Tickets

[captainDave]

I was accused of employing somebody who had run up $7,800 in parking fines going back ten years before I had ever met him. The Seattle Municipal Court’s collection agency demanded that I garnish the guys wages. I refused because he was never an employee nor had I even seen him since last year.

I have tried for nine months to explain to the collection agency that the person they were after was just a merchant selling to the public at our Floating Farmer’s Market in 2012. There would have been no way to garnish anything from him even if we had the market open in the winter.

The wage garnishment order came in January after the farmer’s market closed for the season. The collection agency was able to obtained a default judgement lien against me for the $8,000 to cover the guys parking fines without any proof of him being employed by me.

I have searched far and wide and have found no case anywhere in the country where a collection agency was able to arbitrarily make someone liable for another person’s debts when there was no money owed to the person.

Despite this being nothing less then theft, the Seattle Municipal Court affirms that I now owe the other guy’s fines. The collection agency, Alliance One, is a multi-billion dollar international company that specializes in collecting ticket debts for local governments around the world. They don’t give a crap where they get the money from as long as they get it.

We had to close the FarmBoat Floating Market in July due to the immense problems imposed upon us over this issue.

You can read about the situation at http://www.FarmBoat.org “FarmBoat Under Siege”

(Here is a direct link to the news article on our blog: http://www.blog.farmboat.org/?p=1389)

I remember when we used to have a constitution that prevented the government from taking money from people without legal justification. The City of Seattle seems to have become a post-constitutional government where arbitrary state action is now the rule of law. It’s one thing to get scammed for someone else’s consumer debts, but to have the government extorting fines from anyone other than the offender is a blatant miscarriage of justice.

Has anyone else here been forced to pay another person’s parking tickets with the City of Seattle or Alliance One?

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[Kevin]

Hi Capt. Dave, I have been a passenger on more than one occasion aboard your vessels. You run a first class operation.

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What the City of Seattle is doing to you is totally inexcusable.

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WHAT can we do to assist you in your fight with the city?

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[Talaki34]

bump

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[captainDave]

Thanks Kevin: We are trying to raise public awareness about this issue because it is something that could affect all farmer’s market and festival operators in the future. According to the Attorney General’s Office, this is the first time they have ever heard of farmer’s market being made liable for a merchant’ invitee’s personal delinquent debts.

It is a very oppressive action by the City of Seattle that could destroy many small businesses and organizations in a time when the economy needs them for job growth and stability.

It can also potentially effect individuals who are involved in any kind of casual association with others such as clubs and volunteer organizations that have social media web sites. The collection agency is after my wife and I personally as well as FarmBoat for the other persons $8,000 in parking debt just because his name was associated with ours through Facebook. Seattle’s ticket collection agency doesn’t bother with checking their claims against the state’s employer database because they say they don’t have to anymore.

Since the Municipal Court is not willing to unwind the false claims without expensive legal action, we are hoping that people contact the Mayor’s Office and ask them why the City of Seattle is allowing ticket collection actions against people who didn’t commit the crime.

Mayor McGinn’s Phone: (206) 684-4000

The City of Seattle needs to have a policy that quickly terminates erroneous employment garnishment actions against individuals and small organizations that don’t have employees. Currently, the Seattle Municipal Court says they have a one-size-fits-all policy when it comes to employer wage garnishment collections. Big companies have entire departments dedicated to processing creditor wage garnishment claims. Individuals and non-employers don’t typically have knowledge of the employment garnishment laws to begin to deal with these kinds of complex issues in the short timeframe allowed.

The laws are very clear. You cannot force people to garnish anything from a debtor if they don’t owe them anything. It is a very simple and quick thing to sort out, yet the City has allowed its ticket collection agency to sit on us for nine months hoping that we will be intimidated into paying them.

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[captainDave]

Talaki34: Thanks for the bump.

It is a very rotten situation when our local city government devises ways to extort money form its citizens without due process–especially when it destroys community programs that promote local healthy foods and cultural initiatives.

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[For Liberty]

Whoa, this is absurd, I’ll email the mayor and Council. I hate to see small business owners hurt like this. You might check with the Freedom Foundation to see if they have worked with any similar cases; they do advocacy work for citizens who are harmed by govt. overreach. Did the City Auditor’s office have an opinion on your case?

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[captainDave]

For Liberty: Thanks for your support. I have not heard of the freedom foundation. I am glad there is a local group doing work to help small businesses. (I assume you mean http://myfreedomfoundation.com?) I will try and contact them tomorrow and see what they think of this situation. I am pretty sure that the case against us is a violation of the 14th Amendment (among many other things).

I have not filed a claim with the city yet. Our damages are extensive since they have arbitrarily wreaked havoc on both our personal and business finances. But they have not backed off from their legal claims against us, so the damages are continuing to pile up while our finances remain under siege. As I understand it, I have a year to file the claim from the date of the first incident of harassment–so, I have a couple months yet.

There definitely needs to be something done about how the City of Seattle is increasingly quashing small businesses. Pretty soon Seattle will be a city of generic office cubicles and franchise strip malls, and people will be wondering what happened to the character and charm that made this area a great place to live.

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[JayDee]

Be sure to buttonhole our current Major and Ed Murray on this. Based on what you’ve said, any similar business is exposed. Good luck.

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[PDieter]

Get Jesse .

I’m not kidding.

http://www.king5.com/news/67279617.html

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[quesera]

I know it’s expensive, but I would hire an attorney and sue for damages in the six figure range. They’ll likely back off well before a court case but they owe you for your business losses. Collection agencies cannot pursue claims they know to be erroneous.

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[captainDave]

PDieter: Jesse is a good idea. I will send him an email.

quesera: I am hoping to find an attorney that might consider doing the case on a pro-bono basis since the case seems to be a major violation of constitutional law. There are a few around that don’t want cases like this to set a new precedence in allowing the government to simply take money from citizens without legal authority and due process. Nor do they want the government to have the ability to arbitrarily put people in jail over arbitrary debt assignment. (The only way a person can be put in jail for debt is if they are named as a garnishee in a collection action and are unable to pay).

The inappropriate use of employer garnishment laws to coerce people into paying fines incurred by others needs to be stopped before it becomes common practice. The government cannot be allowed to generate revenue in anyway that is not commensurate with the laws that “We The People” live by.

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[captainDave]

Thanks to suggestions here, I am making some progress in letting bureaucrats at the city know about our situation. The suggestion to contact the Freedom Foundation was great. They have been very helpful at making countless phone calls to city officials and sending tons of poignant e-mails along with asking direct questions like: Why? and on what grounds”. They also started a bunch of public document requests to try and get to the bottom of the city’s dysfunctional processes and motivations. I am scheduled for a video interview with them tomorrow as well.

I sent an e-mail to “Get Jesse” at King 5 – here is a link to it in our blog: http://www.blog.farmboat.org/?p=1510 – I am sure he receives a billion of these kinds of things each day. So if anyone knows him first hand, Please tell him about it.

The Seattle Municipal Court however is still convinced that their collection agents are right in going after us for whatever they can get. They probably justify their actions because they believe that the money would go to a good cause like buying more parking meters and traffic cameras.

In the meantime, the collection agency has filed new court actions against my wife and I presumably to try and garnish our own wages. Maybe they will blame one of you for being my employer because you posted on this blog?

That’s an interesting concept? I wonder if they can increase the city’s budget by cooking the books so that multiple people owe the same debt? If the original offender still owes, it, and I owe it, and then you owe it too, that would increase the receivables by 300% to help offset the cities debt to asset ration. Just a thought anyway.

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[2 Much Whine]

Cap’n Dave, I feel for you and would hate to be in your situation. I also understand you are justifiably VERY FRUSTRATED. I might suggest, however, that comments like “They probably justify their actions because they believe that the money would go to a good cause like buying more parking meters and traffic cameras” and “Maybe they will blame one of you for being my employer because you posted on this blog” might make you feel better but they will likely do nothing to help your cause. Those comments show a bit of attitude that our bureaucrats typically don’t take kindly to and can create more of an adversarial relationship than a cooperative one. Just an observation.

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[captainDave]

2 Much Whine: My comment was meant as comic sarcasm. I realize that there are a lot of good people working in government that don’t like to see these sorts of thing occur. What has happened is a failure of some key individuals to recognize the limited constitutional powers of our government and the purpose of our justice system. Not being able to see the forest through the trees can easily happen to folks working in the trenches.

I spoke with Mayor McGinn and City Councilman Richard Conlin this evening about the issue and neither seemed to think that it was a good idea for the city to pursue collections against people who don’t owe any money. The two had spoken at a city networking event promoting startups in Seattle. It’s good to see that upper management of our city recognizes the value of small businesses.

We sincerely hope that we can get this situation resolved soon so that I don’t feel compelled to start a late night comedy show :)

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[WSB]

Seattle TImes columnist Danny Westneat picks up Captain Dave’s saga:

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2022029710_westneat13xml.html

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[JoB]

from the times article linked above..

“Captain Dave says he’s asked for help from city officials, to no avail. So I have an idea. Since the financial relationship between FarmBoat and the parking scofflaw was “leftover vegetables,” and since the city seems hell bent to extract some blood from this tiny turnip of a nonprofit market, how about Captain Dave loads up a few boats full of leftover tomatoes and squash — and I mean really left over — and trailers them down to City Hall?

Dump them right in the lobby. There, you got your garnishment, farmers-market style.”

probably not a good idea.. but surely there is an attorney out there who thinks helping Dave resolve this would be a great idea..

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[miws]

Yeah, although the thought of Danny’s suggestion is kinda fun to entertain, I’d hate to see anything like that done in reality, because, in reality, it ain’t gonna be the Mayor, Jean Godden, Richard Conlin, et al cleaning up the mess. It’s going to be some likely already overworked, not paid nearly as handsomely as the Mayor and Council, employee that’s going to have to deal with that.

That’s why it always angers me when I read stories of a disgruntled citizen paying their disputed fine, or payment of hundreds or even thousands of dollars to a Government Agency, or a bank, all in pennies.

In that case, it’s going a clerk or teller counting it, which even with coin counting/rolling equipment, could take hours. The bigshot(s) with whom the true dispute is, is going to be sitting comfortably in their office, doing whatever.

Mike

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[captainDave]

miws: While it’s an entertaining thought to make the payment in rotten vegetables, it would be a lot of work. If I only paid the $500 settlement proposal, I would have to indemnify the city and it’s collection agency against any counter claims for damages. I would therefore have to deliver $8,000 worth of rotten produce to maintain my ability to be made whole in the matter. The value of rotten produce is probably equal to that of compost. I would have to deliver several large boat loads before the city’s bean counters would be obligated to cancel the debt. I already have too much time and money invested in this fiasco.

THE PROBLEM IS A BLOATED RUN-A-WAY BUREAUCRACY

The city has greatly expanded parking and traffic enforcement with new technology and armies of new personnel. Vehicular enforcement is now considered a major revenue generator for the city. The system has outgrown the ability to be properly managed. With all the automation and rigid large-scale processes, there is no protection against situational anomalies caused by human error. The costly mountains of paperwork generated by a simple misidentification of an employer are the result of a systemic malfunction in bureaucracy.

Here is a paragraph out of the contract between the Seattle Municipal Court (SMC) and their parking ticket collection agency :

City of Seattle Blanket Contract 0000002412

Attachment A (Page 3 of 7)

AllianceOne Receivables Management, Inc.

Term 04/01/09 through 03/31/14

“The Municipal Court of Seattle firmly believes in a positive approach in dealing with debtors. The Contractor shall abide by all federal and state laws and regulations and shall not use tactics which may be interpreted as harassment, demeaning or reflect poorly on SMC’s collection efforts. SMC will review and disallow any collection enforcement procedure not consistent with SMC desires. SMC requires that the Contractor employ high ethical standards in their collection philosophy and techniques. The Contractor shall conduct its collection business in a professional manner, which preserves the dignity of The Municipal Court of Seattle and its relationship with its citizens. Dedicated representatives must conduct all collection efforts and these efforts should be conducted in the United States. These representatives will be trained in appropriate collection efforts. “

The collection agency failed to abide by federal and state laws by attempting to collect a debt that was not owed. The Seattle Municipal Court failed to disallow the collection procedure for ten months (so far). SMC could have simply disallowed the collection actions against FarmBoat and myself when it found out that there was no way that we could have employed the debtor (based on no evidence of employment records or funds). Instead, somebody made an arbitrary decision to stray from the rules for whatever reason. Perhaps with all the new excitement over the expanded parking revenue system, architects forgot to put a procedure in place for efficiently handling errors in human judgment.

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[Kevin]

@Captain Dave. DO NOT fall for this trick – that is, settling for $500, or even one penny for that matter.

I would advise consulting a lawyer before making ANY payment, even one dollar! Sometimes if you make a “token” payment, then the debt collector can claim that since you made a “payment” that you are acknowledging that you OWE the debt.

Be VERY careful!

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[captainDave]

Kevin: The demand to pay the $500 was supposedly to cover their legal fees. They now say that the situation “looked like a duck and quacked like a duck” enough to cause them to think that the debtor could have been an employee. Their position is that I am to blame for the way that they interpreted our social media pages. There has been more than a few hunting accidents throughout history where a hunter feebly used the “looked like a duck” excuse in court. Common sense tells me that if they don’t have any legal basis for the principal, then there probably is no basis for their fees. But, the courts don’t always make sense either.

The other thing I found out about that most people don’t know is that when a collection agency settles for a lesser amount, they are required to report the balance as “forgiven debt” to the IRS (Form 1090-C). You will have to pay taxes on the portion of the debt that wasn’t paid.

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[captainDave]

Update: Day 280 Under Siege at http://www.Farmboat.org

The Seattle Municipal Court collection agency is proposing a settlement on this matter whereby they drop all charges if we agree to: a.) Not sue them or the city for damages. b.) sign a gag order to not disclose any further information about the situation, and c.) Sign a document that essentially means that we had previously employed the scofflaw, but didn’t during the time of the writ of garnishment order (in other words, effectively forcing me to commit fraud so that they can say that they did nothing wrong).

The collection agency has now brought new legal actions against me over a misspelling of my last name on an old business license application. I have to go to court next week to fight their new claim that I am doing business under a fictitious name to avoid paying the scofflaw’s debts. It seems like they are searching for technicalities to put more pressure on me to just go away and hide.

I wonder how many trees will be cut down to for all the paperwork in this case? I have gone through three reams of paper and two printer ink cartridges so far. Most of the stuff is electronic and doesn’t even get printed.

I know this crap is getting really old. I hope nobody thinks that this is all I do with my life (because it pretty much is now). My wife is pretty upset about loosing all our great local food connections and being put on the verge of needing public assistance just so we can at least afford to buy cheap box-store foods.

It is becoming a really stupid situation.

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[Kevin]

Don’t fall for it Capt. Dave! It’s a “trick” for sure. Forget the collection agency, and go straight to the City of Seattle.

.

Remember… it’s an election year.

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[singularname]

Can those of us available show up en masse to court with you?

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[For Liberty]

Good idea, let us know if you have a court date that we can attend to support you. Which judge in the Seattle Municipal Court granted a judgment lien using only Facebook posts as evidence? Were they obliged by some weird law, or did they make a blatantly unjust ruling? Re: this year’s election, Albert Shen is campaigning as a voice for small business owners and wants to get rid of bureaucratic obstacles for small businesses; he also wants to shift away from using parking enforcement as a revenue generator – might be interesting to ask him as well as his opponent Mike O’Brien for their opinions on your situation.

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[captainDave]

Kevin: The Conner Edwards from the Freedom Foundation (as suggested by For Liberty) has been doing an amazing job at canvasing city officials with questions about this case. They dug up critical contract details that shows exactly where the Seattle Municipal Court failed to act. The problem we are having is that we get councilman and other officials calling the court, they tell them that it’s already been settled.–The hell it’s been! I’ve still got the $8,000 debt and court actions against me.

I was hoping the mayors office would try and do something about it since they have been receiving tons of calls. So far, the Mayor has been ineffective at solving this issue.

singularname: Anyone’s welcome to come and show their support. The next court action is simply to change the heading of the court papers so that it’s easier for them to garnish my own income. Probably not much I can do, but I will object anyway.

For Liberty: Our next court date is this coming Monday 10/28 at 8:45 AM – King County District Court West – 516 3rd Ave, RM E-301. I am not sure which judge although Judge Kato was the judge that issued the default judgement lien against us.

I will try to get in touch with Albert Shen and Mike O’Brian. Shen seems to be a better fit for solving small business issues which Seattle desperately needs right now.

Also, thanks again for the Liberty Foundation suggestion, I think we might have just moved out of the country if it wasn’t for them.

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