Got a parking ticket in San Diego? City must pay more than $16M to drivers hit with late penalties

San Diego is facing a $16.5 million payout after a judge found it added late-payment penalties to parking citations without giving people proper notice of the penalties or enough time to pay the original ticket.

A court ruling this month ordered the city to pay $14.2 million in damages and $2.3 million in interest to nearly 177,000 people who got tickets between Feb. 22, 2022, and March 31, 2025 — and were hit with late penalties.

Instead of complying with a California Vehicle Code requirement to mail an initial letter telling people they have 14 days to pay a citation with no penalty, San Diego was sending delinquency notices with late fines as its first mailed notices.

The May 8 ruling by Superior Court Judge Kevin Enright comes in a class-action lawsuit spurred by resident Toya Hasia-Welch, who warned the City Council repeatedly in 2022 that the city’s parking citations were illegal and made it vulnerable to a large payout.

It’s not yet clear if the city will accept the ruling and make the payouts, appeal, seek some type of settlement or pursue some other legal option.

A spokesperson for City Attorney Heather Ferbert said attorneys handling the case — Deputy City Attorneys Ian Williamson and Dave Abad — are analyzing the ruling.

The spokesperson, Ibrahim Ahmed, declined to say when the attorneys would decide on the city’s next steps.

In court, the city had argued for a much smaller damages award, contending some members of the plaintiff class paid their citations so late that proper notification by the city wouldn’t have mattered.

The city changed its procedures in March 2025, more than 20 months after Hasia-Welch filed suit in July 2023 and nearly three years after she began warning the City Council about the problem during public hearings in 2022.

“This is a blatant violation of San Diego residents’ civil rights,” Hasia-Welch told the council during public comment on Nov. 1, 2022. “It’s wrong.”

She stressed that state vehicle code says people issued citations can’t be charged late fines or penalties as long as they pay their citation within 21 days of the violation or within 14 days of receiving a notice of delinquency.

“That’s a regulation — that’s not an option,” she told the council, noting that she had addressed the same issue at a previous public hearing. “The information should be on here so that people know how to pay their fines without added fees.”

Hasia-Welch urged the council to quickly rectify the situation.

“It screams class-action to me,” she said. “It doesn’t have to get there if it can just get it taken care of. I don’t know what else to do other than keep coming here talking to you all about it and hope that you care.”

The city now sends a correct notice at the correct time in compliance with state vehicle code section 40207, according to court documents.

Richard Berg, a city spokesperson, declined to say how long before February 2022 the city had been sending notices of delinquency that violate the vehicle code.

People who received such notices and paid penalties before February 2022 are not part of the lawsuit and apparently have no legal recourse because of a statute of limitations on their claims.

Attorneys representing the class, Deborah Dixon and Charlotte Barone, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Attorneys for the city unsuccessfully fought efforts to make the lawsuit a class action, contending those affected didn’t have enough in common because they were issued varying types of citations.

Superior Court Judge Joel Wohlfeil, who oversaw the pre-damages phase of the trial, certified the case as a class action in fall 2024 and then ruled the city had been violating the vehicle code.

“The plain language of the vehicle code requires the city to send an initial notice of violation without imposing penalties,” Wohlfeil said in an October 2024 tentative ruling.

Wohlfeil also ruled that it is illegal for the city to send a notice of delinquency any earlier than 21 days after the citation was issued.

Both sides in the case agreed to waive their rights to a jury trial and the right to call witnesses, allowing Wohlfeil to rule on the substance of the claims and Enright to decide the damages.

The city conceded in court papers that it sent delinquency notices too early but argued that not everyone who got an early delinquency notice was harmed by that.

The city argued that the longest period of time a person would get to pay the base amount would be 36 days from the date of the citation, contending that anyone who paid later than that should not get their fines and penalties refunded.

The court rejected that argument.

Enright ruled that the city must pay damages to those affected and apply an interest rate of 7% to those damages. Typical payouts will likely be about $80 per person per citation.

Those deemed eligible for the class by the court should have received a postcard about the case.

Eight individuals chose to opt out of the class action, which allows them to pursue action against the city separately. Those people received a total of 33 citations during the period covered by the suit and paid $1,435 in late fines.

Hasia-Welch was cited for a parking violation on Feb. 2, 2022, and received a notice of delinquency on April 6 of that year, according to court documents.

The notice said she owed $112.50 in total fines and penalties. It didn’t say she could pay only the $57.50 base fine if she paid within 14 days, which the state vehicle code requires delinquency notices to say.

For details, visit sandiego.gov/parking/hasia-welch.