Ticket to deride

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by GEORGE MADDUX

A $42 parking ticket might seem a minor inconvenience to some, but to Véronique Langelier it has been enough to start a crusade for justice of the unjustly ticketed. The law office clerk from NDG has been organizing residents targeted by what she considers the ticket-writing excesses of the city during the repairs to the Décarie Expressway.

"The whole issue is that people are being taken advantage of. They're scared of fighting the city, but I'm not," says Langelier. The non-car-owning Langelier borrowed her father's wheels on Nov. 10 and left it overnight in front of her Addington home. "There were temporary 'No Parking' signs up for the construction work that I didn't see at the time, but I realized that it's just laziness--there was absolutely no construction work being done." Her small word-of-mouth campaign has snowballed as "many others" have come forward to enlist her services in fighting to get a full refund. "I'll go to small claims court for everybody if I have to," she says.

Langelier says her crusade has yet to be acknowledged by the authorities, including local city councillor Sonia Biddle. "The city has been very arrogant about this," she says. She advises others ticketed during non-existent construction work to pay the fines and appeal them afterwards. Yet Langelier's own ticket remains unpaid because she unknowingly paid somebody else's fine. Seems the ticketing agent placed the tickets on the wrong cars.

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