Milwaukee Man May Lose Home Over $50 Parking Ticket; Case Points To The Need For Court-Appointed Lawyers For Defendants In Civil Actions, Says Judge

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Journal Sentinel reports:

• Peter Tubic ignored a $50 parking fine in 2004, and on Monday, it cost him his $245,000 house. In what city officials believe is the first case of its kind, the city foreclosed on Tubic's house on W. Verona Court after repeated attempts to collect the fine - which over the years had escalated to $2,600 - had failed.(1)

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• Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Richard Sankovitz technically stayed the judgment to give Tubic one last chance to explain why he hasn't paid or even responded, but Sankovitz ruled in favor of the city's foreclosure. [...] Judge Sankovitz called the case a shame and said it demonstrates the need for judges to have authority to appoint attorneys for people involved in civil litigation. "If you were a criminal, we'd take care of the whole problem for you, get you an attorney," he said.

• "But if you're involved in civil litigation - in jeopardy of losing your house or your family . . . what we do is make you go out and find your own attorney. "If we gave people the help they needed near the beginning of their problem, their problems wouldn't snowball the way they do."

For more, see Milwaukee man faces foreclosure because he didn’t pay parking fine (The ticket went unpaid for four years, eventually amounting to $2,600 in fines).

Go here for story update.

(1) According to the story, Tubic first got the fine for parking his Ford E150 with no license plates in the driveway of the home, which belonged to his parents at the time . The radiator had broken and Tubic couldn't get his plates renewed unless the van passed an emissions test. He didn't have the money to make the repair and had more pressing worries, he said. His father was suffering from dementia. His mother was battling cancer, and he was their live-in caretaker. He needed to shop, cook, clean, maintain the house and tend to his parents' needs. The van repair could wait, he thought. MilwaukeeParkingTicket