Help appeal a traffic violation

just pay the fine unless you are completely innocent

Are you saying they're incorrect?? It wasn't really you? Did you drive in downtown Rome in 2015?

I believe the OP was not aware of the fines until returning to the US in February of this year. Not denying the transgressions but simply wanting to contest the additional penalties for not paying the fines promptly.

I am not denying the violation. I did not receive ther letters until this month . I am trying to ask them to consider only 1 violation since it is for the same offense so I will only pay 231.32 Euros instead of 925.28euros for the 4 tickets which I think ( as I remember) for the same offense in the same area.

Save your breath and your postage. Appealing at this stage is too late and even if it weren't you'd have to pay something like 25 % or 25 Euro to appeal each one. I have sent you a PM.

It might not be the same offense. Sounds like a ZTL violation. Each time you enter a ZTL, it is a new offense. Some people that get lost or are unaware of the ZTL can rack up numerous tickets in a single day.

None of us here are legal experts. Any appeal process will be explained in the notices you got. You'll have to follow that.

I agree, you most likely got 4 different ZTL fines for entering either the same area multiple times or for entering different ZTL's. The fact that you were living in a place different than the address you gave the rental company does not allow you to not pay the fine. If you were there you should pay the fines before more fees catch up to you. Also be aware they are now sending collection agencies to collect these fines.

donna

Does anyone know how/why they manage to send notices like this 3 years after the fact? How does that happen? Even if I did transgress, I would be pretty annoyed at getting a fine several years later because you're simply not prepared to absorb such a large cost out of the blue. What's going on here? I thought the rental companies charge their "admin" fees and pass the address onto the authorities, who then send the violation to the renter. It seems like some kind of automated audit was run (several years later) and now everything gets caught in the net at last.

For what it's worth, I got 4 separate speeding camera violations on the same stretch of road driving to work (I didn't know there was a speed camera put there at that time). I got the violation letters all at once, so there was no opportunity to "learn" and adjust my driving until I had to pay all of them at once. Everything was photographed (car, license plates, date and time stamp, etc), there was no reason to appeal it.

Maybe it wasn't a rental car but the OP's personal car?

Did they have proof they notified you in 2016? If you were living in France, that is not in Italy, the authorities had one year to notify you. If you have never seen it before, you probably didn’t sign the registered mail receipt. If they have no proof of timely delivery, they have no case. I wouldn’t pay.

Like many businesses, the Italian entity sells the 'debt' to a collection agency. That agency will then resort to dubious methods to scare the 'debtor' into paying. Truth, transparency and fairness take a backseat: sending a letter three years later is just their gamble on a long shot payoff.

Does anyone know how/why they manage to send notices like this 3 years after the fact?

Read again the original post. They sent the first notice 1 year after the fact, within the legal terms, and I bet they kept on sending other letters during those 3 years.

you'd have to pay something like 25 % or 25 Euro to appeal each one

Appeals to the Prefect are free, but I wouldn't do it: there isn't an obvious mistake by the cop/the camera/the rental agency. Larracas was actually driving in a ZTL without a permit, and a Prefect can double fines in case of groundless claims. Therefore a Judge would be the only option.

The cost to appeal a fine in front of a Judge would be 43 € in this case (less than 1,100 € in fines). I've never heard about 25 % or 25 € per fine. May I ask your source of information?
Italians can appeal on-line, but I don't know if it works the same way for foreigners. It would have been possible to get all the fines consolidated into one, but it had to be done within 60 days from the first letter.

you probably didn’t sign the registered mail receipt. If they have no proof of timely delivery, they have no case.

If you are not at your legal address the postman leaves a notification and the registered letter can be collected at the post office for 10 days. From the 11th day it's seen as delivered even if you don't go to the post office. Otherwise avoiding fines would be too easy...

Do US citizens have a legal address to receive legal stuff?

Read again the original post. They sent the first notice 1 year after
the fact, within the legal terms, and I bet they kept on sending other
letters during those 3 years.

Good point. I missed that completely. Makes more sense now with the clarification.

Who sent you this notification now? Who is the sender of this notification? The Municipal Police in Rome? I wouldn’t pay if there was no prior notification within the legal one year term.

If the first notification was sent within the one year limit, which is what the OP has implied, then they are responsible for these fines. There are 4 of them which is probably why they keep sending these notices.

Donna

Just to clarify something Roberto noted about a one year notification period. This may apply to the OP in this thread, as it sounds like he was an EU resident, though hard to tell if he was just on a 6 month visa or other visitor status, so not sure.

The one year notification "rule" though only applies to EU residents, not to tourists. This is based on some earlier discussions on this topic where the specific language was pointed out to me. Afraid I can't point to it now, but did not want the typical poster to get the wrong impression or think they could ignore a letter if they thought it was outside the year.

The rule is 6 months for Italian and EU citizens with a registered address in the EU, one year for the rest of the world.

I am not denying the violation. I did not receive their letters until this month . I am trying to ask them to consider only 1 violation since it is for the same offense so I will only pay 231.32 Euros instead of 925.28euros for the 4 tickets which I think ( as I remember) for the same offense in the same area.

If you ran a red light on Monday at 1st and Main St. and get a ticket, when you run that red light on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, you expect a free pass because its the same infraction at the same place?

My curiosity has me wondering (a) why OP didn't get hit with fees from the rental car company ( presuming it was a rental car) or if OP did why it didn't trigger some inquiry about $80-$200 worth of charges. the rental car company would have imposed for doing a records search for the police (b) where has OP's mail been going for 3 years ? ( c) how did OP get found now, but not for the past 3 years?

The other thing to consider as far as the one year statue goes, if the OP gave an address that was in the US but was living in another country then, of course, they would not receive the official fine at the alternate address. The fine goes to the address listed on the rental contract, which was probably the address on his drivers license.

Donna

The OP stated that s/he lived in France as an expatriate (i.e. an immigrant) until February 2018. Since the traffic violations occurred in 2015, I must assume s/he was there for at least the period 2015-Feb 2018.
If these circumstances are true, I suspect the OP could have been driving his/her own car, not a rental. Also if s/he was in France for at least 3 years, why hasn’t s/he received notification with registered mail while living in France? And now, just 2 months after s/he moved back to the US, they already caught up with the OP?
I’d like to know who sent this notification now. I doubt it was the Rome Municipal Police. My suspicion it is that this letters came from a collection fraudster. I don’t know where the OP is writing from, but I would not pay if it’s true this was never notified previously. There have been numerous court decisions in Italy that established that a fine notified beyond the statute period (90 days for zitalians and up to a year for foreign residents) are invalid.
In any case, the OP did not give us enough details to know exactly what the circumstances may be.