ticket for rented van

[nycresident]

Hello, I am a New York City resident, this is my first time posting. I recently (late December) received parking ticket in the mail from late September for a van I had rented for from a moving company. The amount was $65, with a $10 late penalty. I assume the ticket was put on the van, and the rental company neglected to inform me about it. The violation was parking a commercial vehicle on a residential street between 9pm-5am, and the ticket was written at 12:15am. Very frustrating to me, as I did not know this was a law and there are no signs on the street to label it "residential," but so be it.

The rental company had the following policy for returning the van: if the warehouse was still open, the renter drives the van back into the warehouse and hands the attendant the keys. If the warehouse was closed, you "park the van on this street [the one the rental company is on] or, if there are no spots, on an adjacent street" and throw the keys through a little hole in the door of the office so that the keys fall onto the floor inside and are picked up the next morning. I returned the van after the office had closed, parking it 2 blocks south and returning the keys.

My question is: when I threw the keys in, did I transfer custody of the van and therefore responsibility for the parking ticket? Did the terms of my rental, that I would pay any tickets, end with my throwing the keys in? Is the argument that I was no longer in custody of the van when the ticket was written get me out of the ticket?

Thanks for your help.

 

[HighwayMan]

Very frustrating to me, as I did not know this was a law and there are no signs on the street to label it "residential," but so be it.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse. There are NO streets in New York City that are "labelled" as residential.

Is the argument that I was no longer in custody of the van when the ticket was written get me out of the ticket?

You parked the vehicle there, therefore you committed the violation. The van was in your custody when you illegally parked it. The ticket is yours.

 

[You Are Guilty]

I'm actually more surprised that the rental place isn't hitting you with a surcharge on top of the ticket + late fee. That's pretty rare.

But as noted, you just earned yourself one ticket.